#hearing gunshots from the cops was much more unnerving

[romance-incubomp3]

cops shot and probably killed someone right around the block from where I work in front of a bunch of tourists and employees and shoppers

[nimmy22]

A Mistake: Chapter 3

They weaved through the streets of the lavish neighborhood doing their best to lose their pursuers. They crushed countless flowers and shrubs beneath their feet as they jumped from backyard to backyard. The sound of gunfire forced them to pump their muscles harder, run faster as the rain beat down on them without mercy.

Why was no one calling the police? A commotion like this would at least draw crowds of families curious about all the noise or the dead bodies littering the street and their neighbor's home.

Sherry tripped, skinning her hands and knees on the pavement. She had a second to cry in pain before Cara was already pulling her up to continue.

"I can't. It's too hard." Sherry cried, breathing laboriously as her lips trembled. "Can we take a break?" She struggled to contain her tears, knowing full well it wasn't the best time to start crying.

"I'm sorry, Sherry but not here. We have to keep moving," Cara warned, glancing behind her. She saw no one and didn't hear any gunshots, but that didn't make it safe. "I can't let them take you, Sherry. Come on, just a bit more, and we'll find help."

Sherry nodded before she began to run again. However, one step, and she yelped, wincing in pain as she put her weight on her knee. It hurt worse than when she fell off her bike while trying to teach herself. She was alone and had to patch things up herself until her mother finally noticed days later.

"What's wrong?"

"M-my knee hurts," Sherry whimpered, watching the older girl move closer to inspect the wound. Blood trickled down the little girl's legs before getting washed away by the rain.

"That looks bad," Cara sighed, turning her back to the little girl before squatting down. "Here, get on my back. I'll get us out of here."

With Sherry clinging tightly to her neck, Cara ran to the edge of the residential area and down a dirt path leading straight into the Arkley mountains. She hoped to find a hiding spot for them to catch their breath and figure out what to do.

They hid inside the base of a tree, only having each other to keep warm. The spiderwebs were all forgotten, as the girls' fear was now too exhausted. There was nothing left to spare for the tiny arachnoids fuming over their ruined webs.

What felt like hours passed, and the girls grew too cold and tired. The little Sherry's knee wasn't looking so good, the bleeding had stopped, but an infection may already be brewing beneath the skin given where they've been.

Seeing the young girl wince every so often, Cara decided it was time to move again. She needed to find help. Perhaps the men all killed each other during whatever conflict brewed up tonight.

Carrying the young girl on her back again, Cara left the forest to walk along a side road. She was on the lookout for a passing car. But their luck was too dry at this time in the night despite the rain.

"Thank you, Cara. I don't think I would've made out without you."

"I... didn’t do anything. I couldn't fight. All I did was grab you and run. God, I'm so damn useless." Cara let out a long sigh and stared down at her feet.

"You're helping me now, aren't you? You could've just left me or...or listened to those men and gave me up, but you didn't. I will definitely ask daddy to give you a raise." Sherry giggled and rested her head against Cara's back. She knew that if her friend wasn't there tonight, she would've been in the dark all alone or worse. She might've stayed hidden in that closet only to be found by the armed men. She didn't have anyone to develop the skills of hide and seek with.

"Oh, you better, or else I'm suing somebody for the years shaved off my life tonight. Your dad sure pissed off some powerful people. Who sends a whole armed squad on some doctor's house?"

"Daddy says there are people who wanted to buy his medicine, use it for bad things. But he told them no, and now they want to steal it." For a split second, Cara imagined Mr. Birkin dealing drugs with a gang, but that image didn't last long. The disheveled, nervous reck of a man with a million things to do simply didn't look the type.

"Did he keep it in the house?"

"I don't think so," Sherry shook her head.

The older girl pondered over it, agreeing with Sherry. If Mr. Birkin had kept this medicine in his home, then surely the security would've been better. And he especially wouldn't leave his only child alone in the house with it.

"They wanted to use you as a hostage. Probably force your dad to give them what they wanted."

"Daddy probably wouldn't care if they took me,"

"Hey! don't say that. Your parents love Sherry." Cara stopped walking and gave the little girl a shake.

"Then where are they? They are never home."

"Their work is very...important, I suppose,"

"More than me?"

"No! Not like that. I mean... it's just a lot-"

"Cara, look! There is a car coming!" the little girl jumped with excitement on Cara's exhausted back, but she paid it no mind as her eyes greedily drank the glow of the headlights coming down the road.

"Thank god," Cara exhaled deeply, feeling as if all her worries had just vanished. "Wait here, I will flag it down."

Cara stood in the middle of the road and waved both arms, trying to get the driver's attention like a madwoman. She definitely looked deranged, out in the rain in the wee hours of the morning. The headlights became increasingly more blinding as the car came closer. She couldn't tell the color of the car or anything about the driver.

The driver showed no signs of stopping, the speed fast and steady. "Please stop!" Cara shouted, her eyes pleading. "Please!" She won't waste the opportunity, god knows when the next car will drive by. She refused to move, standing her ground as the car sped towards her. Neither her racing heart nor the car slowed. For a moment, she thought it was the end, becoming roadkill at seventeen, having done nothing with her life.

But then it stopped, screeching to a halt inches from her shivering form. Cara let her hands fall to the hood, knees almost buckling beneath her. The hood felt warm and soothing against her icy skin. As she moved to the driver's side, she recognized the design of the police cruiser, one explicitly assigned to the STARS unit. Her heart pounded as a new source of hope offered itself to her. This seemed too good to be true.

"Thank you so much for stopping, officer! It's been a hellish night." Cara said, glancing over with a smile at Sherry, who responded with her own.

The door opened, and the officer stepped out, shining a bright flashlight at Cara. She was blinded and had to shut her eyes. "I know this will sound crazy, but please hear me out. I was babysitting this little girl when a group of armed men broke into the house and then-"

"Where is Sherry?" He asked all too calmly. Cara frowned. It wasn't his sense of calmness that unnerved her. It was the familiarity of his voice.

'Of course, it was too fucking good to be true.'

"Wait, how did you know her name was Sherry?" Cara demanded, taking several steps back. While his shades were missing, his slicked blond hair stood out to her. The rain dowsed her like buckets of ice. "You..."

"I won't ask again," He warned, walking towards her with a hand resting on his belt, ready to draw his gun. His eyes were an icy blue, radiating with the power of his cunning intelligence.

"I won't give her to you. Sherry, run-"

"Uncle Albert? Is that you?" The young girl limped over to them with newfound vigor and threw her arms around the older man. He hugged her for a moment before pushing her away, his eyes searching her for injuries.

"Sherry, no! get away from him," Cara jumped forward, snatching the little girl's hand, pulling her away.

"It's ok, Cara. He's daddy's friend." The little girl shook Cara's grip off her before hopping back into Wesker's arms. Sherry snuggled into the warmth of the older man, completely oblivious to the way Wesker stood, looking down at Cara. He cocked his head to the side with a conceited expression. Clenching her fists, she decided she didn't like him.

Wesker loomed closer to Cara, enjoying the way she stumbled back to get out of his way, almost tripping over her own feet. He deliberately bumped into her shoulder as he carried Sherry to the other side of the car, settling her gently into the back seat. He could've chosen the closest door, but where was the fun in that?

Cara stood dumbfounded, staring as the man who had only hours ago slit a man's throat and was now slapping a bandage on a little girl's knee in the backseat of a cruiser. She watched him with narrowed eyes as he tended to the little girl, finally noticing his police uniform.

"Who are you? Why are you pretending to be a cop? Who were those people? What are you going to do with Sherry?"

"I am an officer of the law."

"That's a load of shit. Say, in the slim, extremely slim chance you are actually a cop, shouldn't there be more...officers? Backup? A news station? A public statement? Something like this wouldn't happen in Raccoon and no one crowding in to watch."

"I handled it," Wesker said, strapping Sherry in the backseat before shutting the door. The little girl was already on her way to snoozing off.

"I don't understand, why-"

"Enough with the questions." He hissed, grabbing her arm. He found the little thing a pretty sight, but that mouth of hers was dangerous. "You better kill off that curiosity of yours before it lands you somewhere you'll never leave as a warm body. Don't be another babysitter we have to send a severance package to."

"You're going to kill me," Cara's laugh was void of humor, succeeding in tipping her tears down her cheeks.

"Just be quiet and get in the car."

"Why should I? You could change your mind in a split second and put a bullet in my head."

Wesker twisted her arm behind her back before shoving her against the passenger door. "Then don't tempt me," his hot breath tickled her ear as he delivered his warning. "And if I did go for it, I wouldn't simply kill you. I'll get everyone you love. One unfortunate accident after the next." His hand trailed up her back to wrap around the back of her neck. She whimpered as he shoved her face harder against the glass.

Cara shuddered, processing the gravity of her situation. The man was a trained killer and supposedly an officer. She had already witnessed him kill, had felt his icy blade to her neck. There was no doubt in her mind that he would deliver on his warning. The real question was when?

The first person to cross her mind was Claire. Truly, there were so few people that Cara cared about and who cared for her. The Redfield siblings only had each other, and Cara couldn't live with the guilt of being the cause of her friend's death. Claire was her anchor when everything spun out of control in her life. She would do anything to protect those important to her.

"Fine," She grumbled, taking out her frustration on her bottom lip. She sunk her teeth into the cracked flesh until she tasted the metallic flavor, but that didn't help get rid of the bad taste already in her mouth.

"Great, now we can finally get out of the rain." Wesker stepped away from Cara, already missing the warmth of her body. Perhaps he should've prolonged it for a few more minutes, drove her further into tears. The thought alone stirred something inside of him.

The tension left Cara's body as her arms were freed, and she rubbed her abused muscles, cursing the bastards' existence. She would do all she could to never again make his acquaintance. He started the car as soon as she was seated.

She banged her head against the window as he suddenly leaned over her. "The hell are you doing? I knew it! You already changed your mind," She hissed, failing miserably to shove his hands away.

"Safety first." He purred, a low chuckle leaving his lips as he reached over and buckled her seatbelt in one swift movement. She sat straighter than she ever did her whole life and simply stared straight ahead. She decided that if she simply ignored his existence, he would cease to be, and she'd wake up from this horrible, horrible nightmare. Her body has to be taking revenge for all the heart-disease heavy foods she'd been stuffing herself with, concocting such an awful nightmare for her. How is this a wake-up call if she couldn't pinch even herself awake?

It took too much effort for Cara to keep her eyes on the road. She immediately attributed it to sitting next to a killer. There was definitely no other reason. She kept shifting in her seat, unable to stay still. On the other hand, Sherry was out cold in the back, a fuzzy blanket draped over her.

Cara's fidgeting halted as Wesker tossed something into her lap. She picked it up with furrowed brows, inspecting it. It was some kind of badge, but not just any badge. It identified him as Albert Wesker, captain of the STARS alpha team. It looked legit, something similar to what Chris was issued. She has a thousand questions, but the man with the answers was the most uncooperative bastard she ever met. One more question and she's sure he will throw her out of the moving car.

'He was a cop, a crooked one. How many more in the police could be trusted? Who could help her? Was Chris- No! he wouldn't be part of something like this.' Cara's thought, mind fighting itself, too many thoughts wanted to be the focus.

"You were quite the shatter box not too long ago. Why so quiet now?" Wesker asked, enjoying the sequence of emotions flicker across her face.

"You practically told me to shut up," she tossed the badge onto the dashboard before resting her head against the window. She knew she was in way over her head.

"I said to stop the questions. You can still talk,"

"No."

"Alright then, suit yourself then."

It must've been the warmth of the car or the fatigue of the night that lulled Cara to sleep because she was startled awake by a ridiculously high-speed bump. Her sleep hazed eyes scanned her surroundings before she sat up straight, recognizing where she was.

Wesker had parked the cruiser right in front of her apartment building, a living place for the lesser members of society as it was all they could afford. Her wide eyes found him, and she audibly swallowed. "How did you know where I live."

"Of course, I help my dear friend run background checks on all his employees. One in his position needs to be incredibly careful with whom he uses." Wesker said, reaching an arm to rest on the back of her seat. She recoiled away as if stung by a bee.

"Is this your home, Cara? Can I come with you?" Sherry asked, having woken from her sleep minutes before. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her uncle's muscular arm.

"I-"

"Maybe next time Sherry. After we drop off Cara here, we're going straight to your parents." Wesker said, a sense of finality in his tone that had the little girl obediently return to her seat.

Cara opened her mouth to protest him knowing her name but remembered his background check and shut her mouth. He must know everything legally in the record on her, including her parent's colorful histories.

Unbuckling his seatbelt, Cara was surprised to see him exit the car. He came around to her side and knocked on the window, mentioning for her to get out. He barely gave her space to get out as he stood right by the passenger door with his arm resting on the roof of the car. She was forced to brush past him as his towering frame refused to step back. She caught the scent of gunpowder, soap, and the faintest traces of a cologne. And of course, blood. Despite her terror, she found herself taking a deeper inhale than she intended.

"Tonight, you watched Sherry until her uncle came home, and then they gave you a ride home because of the rain. Nothing. Else. Happened. You understand?" Wesker said, bending down to be at eye level with the trembling girl. With surprising tenderness, he moved her hair out of her face, but his eyes were anything but. She stood very still, wishing the ground would swallow her up. Her attempt at looking away was met with a firm grip on her chin, forcing her to look at him. "Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal." She answered, voice cracking under the weight of her emotions. A lump formed in her throat as her eyes welled up, but she refused to cry.

"Don't mess up if you can't handle the consequences." Satisfied with his work, he stepped away, watching as the girl raced home.

"You can be so mean, Uncle Albert," Sherry whined once the officer returned to the driver's seat.

"Really? I didn't notice."

[yoonseoksoftie]

bonnie and clyde(s) | pt. i

› pairing: min yoongi x original character x jung hoseok › 2.1k words. › criminal!sope › two petty thieves and a bartender in the search for revenge and money find something much more valuable with each other. › parts: i | ii

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” You cry in desperation.

Your heart is pounding against your rib cage, threatening to leap out of your chest. The sound of blood rushing to your head thumps loudly in your ears, muffling the world around you. There’s an excruciating pain in your head, as if a thousand needles are prickling it at the same time. Perspiration sticks to the perimeter of your face, a small droplet of sweat hangs from the tip of your nose. You wipe at it and see red. Fuck. The back of your hand is smeared with blood, the sight of it is so nauseating it rips a sob from your throat.

There is blood everywhere and it is slowly becoming all you can see. Your white fitted dress pants are morphing into a dark crimson color as blood continues to leak out of your partners wound. Everything is coming back to you now, like a role of film flashing in the back of your mind; the money, the motel, the cops, the gunshots, the blood.

The three of you were supposed to have more time, more time to plan, more time to enjoy your victory, more time to…simply more time. You’d skipped three towns and there was no way the police could’ve known about your whereabouts unless…no, that couldn’t be. He was dead and didn’t matter anymore. The probability of you being completely safe was slim to none, but still, it was your only chance, it was do or die.

“H—how bad is it?” You hear your partner ask in a broken breath. He is sitting down on a wooden crate, back pressed against a wire fence. His perfectly tailored suit a wrinkled mess, his tie is undone and his shirt is untucked and soaked in blood. You gently push your hand against his temple, mindful of your bloody hands, forcing his head back to prevent him from looking at his wounded thigh.

“You’ll be fine, you’ve had worse, don’t worry,” You babble, tenderly cupping his cheek in your left hand while keeping the pressure on his injury. “He’ll be here soon and we’ll get you help and you’ll be fine,” You say, like a charlatan, spewing lies left and right for your own benefit.

Without the proper treatment, his wound can get infected or he can simply bleed out and die. There are too many scenarios that result in Yoongi’s death given your circumstances. At night, when sleep eludes you, you allow your mind to wonder. Who will be the first one to walk away, who will be the first one to talk, who will be the first one to bite the dust? When you visualize the way you’ll meet your maker you always imagine it will be through a selfless act or old age, you can never make up your mind.

But never like this.

You just needed more time.

Yoongi’s pale face is looking disturbingly sallow against your swarthy complexion, eyelids fluttering as they fight to stay open, and you feel the hot liquid slide down your thighs. You can make out the faint network of blue and red veins underneath his transparent dark circles. He isn’t looking too good. You lick your dry lips and search for something to say, something to keep him engaged.

“I hear Spain is really nice this time of year,” You murmur softly, hoping to draw his attention away from the small puddle of blood forming on his left side.

He needs help before he bleeds to death— no, he wasn’t going to die hiding away in some dirty fucking alleyway filled with trash and filth, not on your watch.

“Yeah?” he mumbles quietly, the single word is faint, less than a whisper. You keep applying pressure to his thigh, the amount of red liquid leaking from his wound is less and less with every passing second but you have no idea if that is a good or bad thing. Before parting ways, Hoseok told you that as long as he didn’t lose more than three pints of blood he would be fine. That would have been solid advice if you knew how much a fucking pint was, fuck.

“Oh yes,” You continue. “Perfect weather for swimsuits, mojitos, and poker matches. You’d like that wouldn’t you?” Yoongi’s lashes flutter slowly, he looks the way he usually did when he was trying to stay awake late at night to finish watching whatever late night rom-com you were into, except on this occasion his nodding off didn’t make you want to cuddle him. You take his face in both hands, giving his left cheek a couple of faint slaps.

“Hey! Hey!” You exclaim lightly. “Keep your eyes open and look at me Min. I’m gonna need you to put pressure on your wound for me.”

Despite his ill state, the bleeding man in front of you did as he was told, long thin fingers moving to his thigh, pressing down on the injury. You remove your white suit jacket and shiver as the wind brushes against your bare skin, the thin lingerie one-piece you are wearing does little to shield you from the unfriendly breeze.

You extend the material in front of you, “I’m going to wrap this around your wound—“

“I want you and Hoseok to take the money and leave,” The words leaving the dying man’s mouth making you halt your actions, hesitantly you turn to him, his tone unsettling you. “You leave and never come back here, do you understand me?”

Your distress morphs into anger, rage quickening your blood. Neck and face heating up at what he is trying to indirectly convey. Snapping out of it you shake your head, choosing to not respond in fear of divulging your true feelings. Your emotions aren’t appropriate given the situation and your line of work. There is no room for sentiment when his life is on the line and the police are looking for the three of you. You signal at him to remove his hands and furiously fasten the jacket around his wound in a tight knot, ignoring his pained wince.

Once your jacket is wrapped around his injury, you place your hands on your lap and eye your handy work. Anger is still boiling hot within you at his audacity. What type of woman does he think you are? What type of man does he think Hoseok is? Granted, you hadn’t met in the nicest of places and you didn’t know about Hoseok’s feelings towards the two of you but you knew you all shared a rock-steady loyalty. Moreover, it is trust that allows the three of you to share a bed without harming each other, it is the type of fidelity that only people who have lived their entire life in the gutter can bother to have.

It has to count for something, right?

Although the sound of cars and pedestrians passing by can be heard, both of you sit in complete silence. Neither of you uttering a word. The prolonged silence eats at your brain, nick picking every part of it until you are aware of your every limb and breath you take. The silence is tiring and your mind races, thinking of ways to fill the void between the two of you. Too many unspoken words are housed inside the shared silence, begging for release but being held back in apprehension. Yoongi places his large hand on yours, unwrapping your fingers and interlacing them with his. A low gasp escapes your throat at his action, your hand tingles. You feel like a school girl holding hands with her crush for the first time, utterly pathetic. The rough callouses of his palm caress yours, subconsciously, you wonder if Hoseok’s hand will fit just as flawlessly, you really hope it does. Fuck it. Throwing your pride out the window, you open your mouth to speak but a ruckus of hurried steps interrupts you.

You quickly reach for the back of your pants to retrieve your gun. You adjust your position and crouch, angling backward in an attempt to catch a look at whatever idiot decided to cross your path. You curse at yourself internally, both of you are about to be found out and it is all going to be your fault. This was the exact reason why you never allow yourself the freedom of fantasizing about the three of you in a romantic sense. Besides, what kind of person fell in love with two people at the same time? You were being a brat. Giving into your selfish desires will only interfere with your survival and endanger not only your life but Yoongi’s and Hoseok’s even more, you couldn’t do that them, they needed you sharp and ready.

You needed to get it together.

The piece of metal felt heavy in your hand, your grip was tight and steady. You’d fired a gun before but its weight always unnerved you. The device in your hand could malfunction at any moment, it was a man-made machine after all. A damaged cartridge, a dud round, a corroded chamber could all come in between you living another day. Furthermore, such machines invoked sheltered violence inside men’s hearts; instigating them to push their earthly power. You’ve seen men play God thanks to the piece of metal you now possess between your fingers and it pains you to know that you are playing a hand in the same game.

Your internal turmoil must be apparent in your face because Yoongi gives your hand a gentle squeeze. You turn to face him and your eyes meet. He doesn’t speak but you understand the look in his eyes. Both of you’ve had a good run and if this is your last shared moment, you’d go together. You offer him a nod, projecting all your emotions into your eyes, hoping he can see.

You just needed more time.

A contorted shadow came into view, becoming more prominent as it nears the corner. Releasing a heavy sigh, you cock your gun, a few more steps and it will reach you. The steps become louder, you see the outline of a man as he steps out of the darkness, you aim, one, two—

“Whoah there, princess!” in front of you stands all five foot ten of a clearly suicidal man, arms stretched out in front of him in an inoffensive motion.

“For fuck’s sake, Hoseok!” You swear. Is he out of his mind? “I could’ve shot—” your words die in your throat when you see his features dull with something you’ve never seen in his face before.

Fear.

Running towards the two of you, he kneels at Yoongi’s side, eyeing his wound.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, releasing a rough breath. You feel your guts twist as you witness Hoseok’s eyes darken with something between anger and remorse.

“Fuck,” he croaks. If you weren’t seeing him with your own eyes, you would think he was the one who’d gotten shot.

You’ve never heard him speak in that manner, the otherwise confident and arrogant man was no longer present. The vulnerability and tremor in his voice made you want to hit something, you retreat your gaze from the two men adjacent to you, unable to look at them any further.

“Enough,” Yoongi commands gruffly. Shot or not he was still the oldest and it was his job to make sure the both of you are thinking straight. You and Hoseok look at him, giving him your undivided attention, ready to move at his command. “Get me the fuck up from here, I ain’t dying yet, understood?”

As if drenched in cold water, you both spring into action. You hook Yoongi’s arm over your shoulder and wrap your other arm around his waist from one side as Hoseok does the same on the opposite side, hoisting him up.

“The car isn’t far from here,” Hoseok informs. “I managed to lose them right before entering the highway so we’ll have enough time to get you somewhere safe.”

The injured man simply nods, the last few sentences draining his remaining energy. You have so much to say to him, to them, so many things you want them to know. While you carry Yoongi to the car you come to the conclusion that whatever it is that the three of you share is too meaningful to lose, you’ve lost many things in your life but this isn’t going to be one of them.

The youngest of the bunch seems to be feeling the same way. His face is set with determination and you know that look. You’ve seen it in the faces of the men that play at your table, waiting for you to deliver the card that will complete their flush. His emotions are written all over his face. His squared jaw, drawn brows, and tight lips foreshadow danger. It is the look of an apex predator whose territory has been tampered with and is out for revenge.

“You’re going to be fine hyung,” he says firmly, “I swear it.”

next

[awol-newt]

another wayhaught fic

it's like marrow without bone (to live in a house with no home) Maybe God is God. Maybe the Devil is me. Well, I'll just throw my chains on. And tell myself that I'm free.   - Delta Spirit, "Salt in the Wound"

“I just wanted to be free.”

Nicole knows that voice. It sends chills down her spine as quickly as it makes her blood boil. She knows that voice because she heard it before she got shot.

A WayHaught fic.

“I just wanted to be free.”

Nicole knows that voice. It sends chills down her spine as quickly as it makes her blood boil. She knows that voice because she heard it before she got shot .

(The first time. Not… not this time?

   Huh.

       Where’s Waverly? Wynonna?

           Where is she ?)

“You’re in purgatory,” the voice tells her and she whirls around in a fury, brown eyes narrowing as she takes in the sight of Willa Earp. And then she takes a moment to take in their surroundings.

It’s the sheriff’s station. Lonnie’s desk is still a mess and Nedley’s office door is propped ajar. Her own desk still has two binders, a stack of case files, and a mountain of paperwork on it. The small AM/FM radio clock flashes like it might after a loss of power.

It’s the sheriff’s station and it’s empty. There’s no Nedley or Lonnie or Dov or Chris. There’s no Nash, either. There’s nobody but Nicole and Willa.

She feels it now. The stillness of the air and the heaviness in her chest that threatens to turn into something like panic. She closes her eyes and counts to twenty, inhaling for five and exhaling for five until she feels calmer. When she opens her eyes, she hopes to see Wynonna and Waverly staring at her like she’s lost her mind; it’d be better than the reality, which is cracking an eye open to see Willa staring at her with an aura of impatience and maybe something like resentment.

“You aren’t dead. Yet,” she says. It’s so blasé, the way those words come out of her mouth and the sigh that follows.

Nicole pales and shakes her head. Shakes away the unnerving feeling settling in the pit of her stomach.

“Where are we?” she asks.

Willa rolls her eyes. “I already told you. We’re in purgatory. You know, that annoying place between Down There and Upstairs.”

“Purgatory,” Nicole says again. It isn’t a question this time because she remembers now. Being shot. Again.

Charles Gagnon had marched into the station and pulled a gun on the room, demanding his brother be released from their custody. Henri Gagnon had been arrested the previous night, swerving down Main Street drunker than Wynonna after a shit day. The damned hoser had sideswiped Nicole’s cruiser while she was responding to a 10-71 of suspicious activity at the bank across from Shorty’s. His saving grace was that she hadn’t been in the vehicle when he took off a layer of paint and her side mirror. His downfall was that he panicked, stopped his own car, and tried to make a run for it.

He was caught, of course. She’d marched him down the block to the station, tossed him into the drunk tank, suspended his license, and wrote him a fine. The rest of the night was procedural — dealing with his car and her cruiser, the headache of paperwork that such an incident incurred, and trying not to fall asleep during the last hour of the graveyard shift while she sat at her desk handling said paperwork. Especially since she had to turn around and come back to work that afternoon.

Such is the life of a sheriff’s deputy.

But getting shot — again? That is a hazard of living in Purgatory where just about everybody owns a gun or has access to one. Not to mention the crazies and the supernatural.

Charles Gagnon fell into the former category. A little off his rocker with a short fuse and serious co-dependency issues with his brother. When he began waving the gun around, it was Nicole who stepped forward with her hands raised and her movements as unthreatening as she could make them. She walked slowly towards him, putting herself between Waverly and the madman.

“Let’s just talk this out, Charles,” she had said gently.

She tried to follow the handbook and her police academy training. They’d roleplayed scenarios with gunmen and hostages. And after the situation last year with Wynonna, Shorty, and Champ, she had attended a two-day seminar in the big city with a TAC team. Except none of those things prepared her when he pulled the trigger anyways.

She remembers pushing Waverly to the ground and Wynonna drawing Peacemaker. She remembers falling and another gunshot and then Waverly shouted her name. But then…

Oh.

She fell. The floor was cold and it felt so nice because her shoulder was burning and aching. And then Waverly was there, her Waverly, scrambling to lean over her. Her hands went to Nicole’s shoulder and she pressed. Hard. Nicole screamed. And then…

Then she was here. With Willa freakin’ Earp.

“And she remembers.”

Nicole scowls. “Do you have to be such an asshole? I’m apparently dying and I don’t even know if Waverly and Wynonna are okay!”

Willa’s face softens at the names of her sisters. “They’re fine,” she tells Nicole. “They’re both fine. Wynonna shot the guy who shot you.”

Despite everything that happened following Willa’s return, despite having every reason not to trust her, Nicole believes her. It’s a reassurance that she needs to hear, and it allows her room to consider her current situation more clearly.

“I’m dying,” she murmurs. It’s barely audible but it feels so incredibly loud. Those words. “I’m dying.”

“You’re not dead, yet,” Willa reminds her, gentler this time.

Nicole’s eyes widen.

“I can go back?”

She begins to scan the room, looking for any bright gateway or swirl of lights so she can steadfastly spring in the exact opposite direction. Willa must recognize what she’s doing by her darting eyes.

There’s a sigh and a shake of her head. “It isn’t a choice. This isn’t like on television. It’s out of our control.”

“Is that why you’re still here?”

Nicole blinks and suddenly they’re standing in the Pine Barrens near Purgatory. There’s a heavy layer of snow on the ground and it continues to fall with flurries dusting the evergreens and the branches of the trees that dropped their leaves long ago. It’s quiet and beautiful.

She can’t feel the cold or the wind that rustles the branches and sends them swaying just barely.

“This is my purgatory,” Willa says. “I’ve been here since I crossed the border, since Wynonna…” She trails off, never completing the sentence.

Since Wynonna shot her. Since her sister shot her. Since she made the most foolish mistake of her life. Since she lost everything.

“I just wanted to be free,” she says again, even softer this time.

Nicole recognizes the weight in her voice. Has heard it in her own voice so many times throughout her life. It’s the heaviness of regret, of exhaustion, of sadness, and of defeat. It’s the pull of so many, I’m sorry’s that can never be enough to do what’s been undone.

“Free from Daddy, from the Earp curse, from that godforsaken town. From remembering what I had and what I had lost. Free from having to be anybody but Willa. I just wanted to be free.”

It’s a desperate explanation. It isn’t an apology or imploring for forgiveness. It’s the story of a young girl who had to grow up too fast and be too much too soon, who found pain and darkness in every corner of her world.

Nicole knows something about that. It’s a tale with which she’s very familiar. She isn’t sure she ever really knew what light was until she met Waverly and fell in with Wynonna and got to know Nedley and the rest of the town. Until she found a place that felt like home and people she could call family.

But Willa— Willa never got that chance. To really get free from the machinations of souls older than both of them combined. To find her own light somewhere out there.

She looks at Willa out here, a bright spot of life, morose as she may be, in this vast wilderness and unending white only speckled with forest green and ash gray tree trunks and limbs. And when she blinks again, they’re back in the empty cop shop.

“I wish you’d had the chance to be free without being such a shithead,” Nicole finally says. It isn’t forgiveness but it is understanding and maybe a tinge of sympathy.

Willa laughs. It’s rough and sharp and sounds like it hurts her as much as it disquiets Nicole. “Yeah,” she says. “Except I didn’t have the chance and now I’m here. Waiting for the Universe to decide where I belong or if I’ll never belong anywhere except purgatory.”

“I don’t think anybody belongs nowhere,” Nicole offers, though the optimism sounds uncertain even to her own ears.

Willa shakes her head. “No, it’s okay. I have to pay for my sins somehow, right?”

The sadness is clearer now. The despair and defeat that clings to the once heir. It holds tight to her, suffocating like a python’s constriction; each gasp for air brings you a little bit closer to death.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t different.” Nicole means these words.

“Me too.”

It isn’t absolution but it’s something. The grip of sadness loosens just slightly.

There’s a buzz beneath Nicole’s skin. Like the tingling of a limb falling asleep when you sit or sleep funny.

“Do you feel that?” she asks Willa.

And Willa looks at her and cants her head to one side. It’s a Waverly-sort of mannerism, and Nicole feels a sharp tug at her heart.

“The tingling and that chest pain?” she clarifies when Willa doesn’t respond.

The hum of her body grows and grows and it’s starting to become really uncomfortable. It feels kind of like what she imagines being lit on fire might feel like.

“They’re saving you,” Willa finally tells her. “The Universe. My sisters.”

“I’m… I’m not going to die?”

Nicole’s jaw tenses with another lance through her chest.

“You’re not going to die.”

Willa’s voice begins to fade, sounding distant against the blood roaring in her ears. The edges of her vision start to go black as the pain increases exponentially. She hears Willa speak to her one more time and she strains to listen as she squeezes her eyes tight and feels herself begin to fall over.

“Look after them, okay? Tell them that I love them. Both of them.”

And then she wakes up with a jolt, her eyes snapping open to meet the most beautiful hazel eyes she’s ever known.

“Waverly,” she breathes. And it hurts. It hurts and she’s alive.

There’s a steady beeping of machines next to her and her left arm is slinged. Her head is fuzzy and all the lights are soft but she’s alive and Waverly is safe and so is Wynonna and Willa is marginally less awful than she’d thought before she got shot. Again.

“Nicole. You’re awake,” Waverly whispers with a bright smile and tears in her eyes.

“I’m here, Waves,” she says and she can hear her words slur, loosened by whatever drugs they’re pumping through her veins. “I’m alive.”

“You almost died, Nicole. Again. Again! You’re like a cat with nine lives, I swear, Officer Haught.” She pushes from her chair next to Nicole’s bed and paces the length of the small room. She’s exasperated and Nicole can tell she’s a little angry, the emotion warring with the elation that Nicole is awake and alive.

Alive and awake.

“I saw Willa,” she mumbles. “In purgatory. That’s where I went when I was waiting to live or die.”

Waverly slumps back into her seat and reaches for the hand of her not shot-up arm. “What are you talking about, baby?”

She feels the medication even more saliently now. She has to fight against it, the fog that wants to cloud her brain and pull her back under. Part of her is afraid she won’t wake up again.

(It’s going to be a thing, isn’t it?)

What she tries to say is this: “I saw Willa in purgatory. The real limbo, between heaven and hell kind of purgatory. She said she just wanted to be free and I kind of understand that. She wants you to know that she loves you, both you and Wynonna. And she asked me to look after you guys.”

It doesn’t come out that clear and concise but Waverly’s smart and Waverly knows her girlfriend and Waverly knows how to piece together drunken, slurred speech like nobody else. She gets the message and her eyes tear up even more than before.

“She said that?” she asks and the question is so, so soft and scared and hopeful.

Nicole’s head dips in a nod. “She said that.”

Waverly wipes at her eyes and laughs a sad but happy laugh. The words are a lifetime too late but they do mean something. They do begin to patch the hole in her heart that’s been torn through with so much grief and trauma and loss. She laughs again.

“She’s still the worst,” Waverly grumbles.

“Totally the worst.”

Waverly holds tight to Nicole. It’s enough of an anchor and a promise that it feels okay to drift away for just a short while. She’s got Waverly to tether her down so she can float away to dreamland and not fly too far away.

Nicole dreams of falling snow and the smell of evergreens and feels the warmth of a crackling fire in a hearth. She dreams of three little girls with smiles on their faces as they run happy and free.

[captainfile]

Oh What It Is

Words: 19037

Ao3 link

Peter Pan/OC, warnings for major character death, not-super-graphic torture, and Pan being as fucked up as he is in OUAT. 

Summary: Owen Flynn doesn't operate alone. He's got a teenager in tow when he hits Captain Hook with his car outside Storybrooke; his daughter. Both Owen and his daughter think they have an idea of what's going on, but many others are pulling the strings on their lives. Pan's grab for the Heart of The Truest Believer has grander consequences than the family that'll be left behind if he succeeds- the Home Office is very real, and very dangerous.

“Dare to explain what you’re leaving for this time?” 

I look up from my phone and frown at the school’s receptionist. She’s frowning, too, the kind of frown that says she thinks I’m the one orchestrating these absences. Fuck, I wish. Skipping school is way better than being dragged off to who knows where and missing it. So I don’t answer, to her annoyance; instead I look pointedly at the note in her hand stating clearly that there’s a family emergency and I’ll be back by tomorrow. 

I’m never back by tomorrow. Something always happens. In China, stalking one guy ended up including a couple train rides and a typhoon- not to mention the plane there and back. In Mexico, we were trapped in the rubble of an ancient temple for thirty hours. And don’t get me started on Manhattan. No matter the excuse, something always seems to go wrong- I don’t expect to be back for any of my quizzes this week, but I always end up studying anyways, because what else am I supposed to do on a six hour stakeout? When Dad interrogates someone for three days because there was more intel than he thought he’d find? 

“Hey,” Dad greets me when I find him waiting in front of the school. The car’s already packed, but I don't ask where we’re going. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel and I dig through my book of riddles and the road just keeps going. “Tamara, do you copy?” He turns the radio on after hours of silence, switching it to one of his secure channels. We never listen to music. Sometimes I wonder why he brings me. 

“Hey, Knight’s in the bathroom, make it quick.” 

“You have him, then?” Knight is a familiar term. Tamara made it up as a code. He's one of Dad’s biggest targets, also known as Neal Cassidy, Baelfire, Benjamin Darling. There's little traces of him dating back two hundred years, and when Dad’s partner Tamara seduced him, he admitted to knowledge of magic. When is a mind like a fairytale? When it’s made up. Following my dad around all the time in search of it, I’ve seen some pretty strange things, and I know that my grandpa somehow died from it, but I’m not sure I fully get it. “We’re four hours away.” Oh, no. I groan at this update, and get a sharp look, but Tamara's laugh crackles over the radio. 

“I think you’ll enjoy this one finally, Robin, we’re meeting the son.” 

“Okay, I’m cutting you off there, how close are you?” Dad interrupts. I roll my eyes and go back to my book. What can’t talk but will reply when spoken to? “Any other updates?” 

He isn't a cop. He's like a vigilante or something, working for an organization called the Home Office, trying to seek and destroy magic. He wants me to follow in his footsteps, too, but. He doesn’t know the numbers I’ve memorized. 

That would change things a bit. “Storybrooke?” I read off a sign when four hours have passed and the sun has set. Dad hands me his wallet, and I swap his driver’s license. Owen Flynn becomes Greg Mendell, the cheesiest name I could think of when he asked my opinion. My name changes to Robin Mendell, though I did campaign for keeping my real name to make the pun louder and clearer. Dad said it would make his disguise too easily broken through. Our real licenses, I tuck into an old envelope from Sears. Even if our car was searched, it would probably be ignored, treated as trash. Our car has never been searched. We continue driving along the road when suddenly there’s a figure in the headlights- 

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” 

“My dad just crashed his car, oh fuck,” I gasp, blinking against the darkness and finding smoke in front of me. the hood is crumpled, a branch has gone through the window. “We’re um- we just passed this sign, for Storybrooke?” 

“I’m sending responders your way, there’s a hospital in Storybrooke; can you describe the scene for me?” 

“I don’t know,” I sob, and then turn to my dad and sob again at the sight of him. “He’s unconscious, and bleeding everywhere, and the airbags-” 

“Ma’am, please breathe; what does the car look like?” 

“Like it’s about to catch fire,” I decide, and try to wrench my door open. There's broken glass everywhere, and I start to hear sirens as I fight with my seatbelt. My phone, dropped in my lap, makes some noise, but I stay focused on escaping. Is Dad even breathing? There’s too much smoke to really tell. Next thing I know, I’m wrapped in a shock blanket in the back of an ambulance and Dad is still bleeding. They make me sit in a curtained off area of the emergency room, alone. 

“Hi,” a blonde woman quietly greets me after nearly an hour. “I’m Emma Swan, the sheriff,” she continues, “what’s your name?” 

I go to answer honestly, but isn’t Tamara going to be here soon? “Robin.” The only way I know how to contact her is with the radio in the car. 

“Robin, you and your dad were pretty hurt,” she tells me. Like I don’t already know. “Is there anything you can tell me about what happened, or about your health insurance, or anything?” I tell her we don’t have health insurance, and that I saw a figure and a bright light before we crashed. The headlights, obviously, reflecting off whoever we hit. Wait- we hit someone, didn’t we? “He’ll be okay, and your dad will, too.” How? we must have been going over forty. I don’t ask, but there’s no way someone could have survived being hit by a car at that speed. The sheriff thanks me and leaves me to sit for another eternity. I wish I had even my books, or homework. I sleep in the emergency room, and when I wake up, I’m allowed to visit Dad while he sleeps before I’m escorted to an inn and diner. The car is wrecked, but I’m allowed to dig through it and bag up all our belongings, which sit in my hotel room with me, and while I’m still alone and scared, I’m not bored anymore. 

“Robin, you said?” A waitress at the diner smiles at me. She can’t be much older than I am, still filling her features in young adulthood. “I’m Ruby.” 

I just nod, avoiding conversation for a list full of reasons. Thankfully, Tamara calls my dad’s phone before the waitress can continue trying to talk to me. Her name in his phone is just “Her” for maximum strangeness. “Finally, what’s going on?” she asks. 

“It’s Robin,” I tell her, keeping my voice low. “He’s in the hospital.” 

“What?” she shrills, “I’ll be there in a couple hours-” 

“He’s fine, I know you two have a plan with the Knight,” I tell her, though it crushes my heart to say. I’m allowed to complain, allowed to moan and groan and gripe until the day’s out- but I can’t mess with their business. I did, once, when I was younger, and, well. It didn’t end too nicely. Not that many things do, of course. “We got into a car accident, and they’re keeping him for a couple weeks,” I report. 

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Tamara admits, which sends my heart right into my throat. “They won’t be happy.” 

“I-” I gasp. I don’t know what to say, really. “Wait, maybe-” 

“You shouldn’t have told me,” she deadpans, and hangs up. I stand quickly, too quickly, and rush towards the exit. Ruby asks me what the hell I’m doing, I still have my computer open on the counter, but it’s the last of my worries. The air bags did some damage, as did the crash in the first place, but I go as quick as I can to the hospital and collapse at Dad’s beside, apologising profusely. 

“Hey, hey, hey, talk to me,” Dad suddenly whispers, awake but clearly drugged to hell. I hand him his phone and just cry. Everything in the last twenty four hours, I just let out. It’s horrible. The fear, the pain, the dread of what I know will come next. Dad said, when he sent me, that he only spoke with the Home Office through code, and Tamara was one of the only two members he’d ever met in person at that point. The other didn’t have a name, his recruiter and boss. He never got to know the mysterious man like I did, and insisted as he took me away that I’d be fine once they briefed me on the importance of the mission. I was briefed, yes, but I don’t want Dad to be briefed. Because it isn’t some meeting with a man in sunglasses explaining how horrible magic is. I was young, strong. What if they kill him? 

Dad doesn’t listen to me, and I stay by his side as much as he tolerates in his recovery. Weeks pass- my school moves me to online classes, finally tired of all the odd absences and now this. Ruby hovers and asks about what I'm learning like she’s never taken calculus before. 

It seems like forever before they let Dad come to the diner and stay with me. He seems fine, though, like the Home Office didn’t actually care about his slip up. I check often and annoyingly about how he’s doing. Finally, Tamara arrives and sneaks into our room to talk and give me a hug. It’s weird, I’ll admit, to be close with my insane dad’s insane girlfriend. Still, she’s nice. Nicer than the rest of the Home Office. I’m often lookout on their missions, so I place myself around town to do homework, making it normal for me to be somewhere strange and alone. They talk business and magic and overanalyze photos and videos and the car crash, finally asking me to camp outside a building near the bay. I'm fine with that, sitting on a dock and filling out sudokus, trying to pretend like I don't hear someone screaming inside, or gunshots. Tamara runs up to me and drags me away with Dad to a clearing in the forest before excusing herself. 

“What’s this?” I try, unnerved by her behavior. Dad frowns, head tipped down, and kneels on the ground. “Dad?” 

“Your grandfather,” he finally says. “My father, he’s buried here.” 

I swallow nervously, and hazard, “why?” 

He gestures, so I sit on the ground next to him. “When I was really young, we used to camp, my dad and I; we had so much fun, seeing all these beautiful forests and mountains everywhere we went. 

“One trip up here in Maine, a storm comes through and our truck is damaged, so we try and hike to find help, and suddenly there’s this town that we both swore wasn’t there before, Storybrooke. We were welcomed, but it was a strange town, it seemed like the same thing happened every day we stayed there. We were in Granny’s Diner, the same one we’re in now, and one evening the mayor had us over for dinner. I had just lost my mom, your grandma, and the mayor for some reason- she wanted to adopt me. Dad said we should leave, that it was the last straw of how strange the town was, but suddenly we were stopped, and he was arrested. He told me to run, and I never saw him again. 

“I ran from the mayor telling me to stay and be her son, and was able to contact the police. They escorted me back here to search for my father; strangely enough, though, the whole town was gone, as quickly as it had appeared. Coming back here now, I was sure of the magic; Regina, Granny, they haven’t aged a day. But Regina insisted that he left.” He rests a hand on the ground under his knees. “But here he is: she killed him.” Why? How? Who could be so desperate for a son that they would abduct him and kill his father? I swipe at my tears, and noticing them, Dad pulls me into a hug. 

“I’m sorry about your father,” Tamara speaks into the quiet, and my dad looks up at her but I don't. 

“Me too,” he replies with voice lower than usual. It rumbles through my shoulders and calms me, so I duck my head lower into his chest. “Did the folks back at the Home Office know anything about that thing?” 

“Yeah, they did,” Tamara whispers, “and you’re never gonna believe what it does.” 

Storybrooke’s mines are dark from my perspective, keeping watch from a bush while my dad, Tamara, and a man who doesn’t introduce himself step in. Something explodes, shaking the ground and my head, but they step out intact before I can panic and run in. The stranger splits, but the rest of us keep watch over the mines for a while longer. 

“That’s Regina, with the dark hair,” Dad mutters when Sheriff Swan and another woman duck into the mines. The sheriff leaves and comes back with a group, trailed by Knight’s prepubescent son. “Okay; stay with Tamara, I'll be right back,” Dad tells me, though Tamara is the one who nods in understanding. They seem more tense than usual, and her gaze is a little unfocused while we wait behind a building. Another explosion sounds, but she seems unworried about it, so I just keep waiting until Dad comes around the corner with Knight’s son in tow. Tamara stands but I balk- this isn’t right- 

Tamara grasps my arm tightly and helps my dad drag the kid towards the dock while I stutter, “Dad, what the fuck are you doing?” When I should have asked that question a long time ago. We approach the water with shouts for Henry, the kid, coming up behind us, but then Dad throws something in the water and a vortex appears out of thin air and threatens to swallow the dock. The water takes on a greenish glow, spinning dangerously, and I’m tugged by my arm into it, and huge alarms are ringing in my head; my dad has kidnapped a child, and now physics is breaking, and stupid Tamara pulled me into it, and I can’t see, and we are going to die. 

I was fourteen. and tired. For so many years, I had followed my dad blindly around the world, telling him when there was someone walking towards him on the street, approaching strangers and pointing them towards my disguised father asking for help. In that time my interest in what he swore could never be a coincidence had waned. His only grew, and it wasn’t contagious. it was my birthday, and I was supposed to bring candy to school for my friends to celebrate, but Dad was called in the morning, and we had to go. Only a short flight later, we were in San Diego. I swapped my dad’s license- since I didn’t have one yet- and sat in the blistering heat all day with him, watching a back road from the roof of a warehouse. We were nowhere near the beach, and though there was a view, all the roofs around reflected the sun too well. Instead I kept my head down and tried to nap to conserve energy. But I was so tired in every way that I couldn’t sleep; I was dehydrated, hungry, frustrated that I had to celebrate my birthday with my dad on an ugly old roof away from my friends. The sun continued to beat down on us, but Dad didn’t say anything. He could be so patient with the outings. Missions. Sometimes I could too, but it was my birthday- goodie bags assembled with care sat in the back of my mind and at home on the kitchen counter. My stomach growled for the millionth time and I decided that was the last straw, that I at least had to do something. Move. So I called a bathroom break, slipped out a broken window on the first floor, and ran in the opposite direction of his lookout. 

There weren’t many houses nearby- I had to run quite some distance, hoping my dad wouldn’t notice, before I spotted a group of kids playing with some adults watching on. Gasping for air in the dry heat, I went up to the adults and begged for some water. It was beyond exhilarating- I felt free, in control, for the first time in my life. They called the police, of course, who came and brought me to a dim station. They asked me so many questions, and I was finally able to voice some of my anger. My dad kept travelling, I told them, pulling me out of school to sit in places for hours at a time. They asked me about my mom, but I didn't know anything. That phone call changed my view of the world more than magic ever could, I think. 

“Penelope?” The voice on the other end asked. I said yes, wary but excited- everyone I knew always had two parents, even if they were divorced. Some of my classmates had fathers in jail, but at least they could visit. “Oh, sweetheart, I shouldn’t have let him keep you, but you can’t stay with me.” Crying, because what if it really was my mom and she didn’t want me, I asked her what she meant. “I’m in jail, Penelope, or I would run to you with open arms; I'll be released in about five years, earlier if I work extra hard, and I’ll come get you, I sweat.” I told her no, I couldn’t keep running around with Dad for another second. “You don’t have to, Sweet Pea,” she insisted, “and I’ll be here for you whenever I can.” It wasn’t fun but I sobbed on a bench until Dad arrived, shouting at the officers for dragging me off. In the end I went back with him. Always the same. 

We went home, my dad and I. Just a little place with a good enough school nearby. Dad told me again about the Home Office, about magic, to convince me to care about his missions as much as he did. The damage was done, though: I had already taken control, even though I had no clue what the woman who called me Sweet Pea was in jail for. It was so relieving and exciting to see a chance at another life, different from how boring and unpredictable mine was. He got a call from the Home Office that night and led me to the front door despite my protests. 

The Boss was a tall man from my perspective then, imposing, and dressed smartly. He wore sunglasses despite the time of day and easily forced me into the back of his dark car. A scratchy bundle of fabric fell across my face, and there was a sharp pain in my thigh, just as I passed out. 

The water breaks, and I can breathe again. There’s salt where it shouldn't be that blinds and chokes me. Dad helps me to a beach- the dock is gone, so I don't know where we are- and then pulls away to stop the boy from running off. 

“Slow down, pal, you got nowhere to go.” 

Tamara sighs and stands beside me, smiling at Dad. “Mission accomplished,” she declares. I look around and take everything in to keep myself from doing something rash like before. For one, it’s nighttime. For another, we’re on a beach with a jungle in front of us. For yet another, what the hell is the mission? Henry’s a kid, and we just almost died. I turn to ask my dad when Henry pipes up. 

“Are you sure about that? Because soon, my mom’s coming to get me; both of them.” 

Dad steps forward and crouches to his level. “You might want to take a look around, kid; you see any clock towers?” The smile on his face is tense, unfamiliar to me. “We’re a long way from Storybrooke.” 

“It doesn’t matter!” Henry quickly yelps, “my family’s been to the Enchanted Forest before, and they can get here again.” Enchanted Forest? I open my mouth to start making some long overdue demands, but a howl cuts through the night, chilling my bones. Pins and needles spread from my sandy palms to the back of my neck. It reminds me of something, I just don’t know- 

“Well, we’re not in the Enchanted Forest, either.” 

“Passing along the favor, then?” 

Tamara whirls on me for speaking. Dad catches my drift and his smile turns to a cold scowl before he snaps, “this is different.” 

“This is mimicry,” I snarl and Tamara grabs my arm again. 

“This is Neverland.” Henry asks if she’s certain of that, too, and she continues, “it’s the mother lode of magic, of course we’re here to destroy it.” How could my dad do this? What happened in Storybrooke? Why isn’t this just stalk somebody and then report them to the Home Office? Dad’s not a fighter. I’m sure of it. “Owen, the communicator, to contact the Home Office?” 

Dad doesn’t flinch at either name drop the way I do. He just reaches into his pocket and hands her a large phone. He doesn’t look at me. “An office, in a jungle, huh?” Henry remarks. “Who works there?” 

“Who we work for is not your concern, kid,” Dad tells him, “just know that they take care of us.” Henry asks how we’re getting home after they destroy magic, and Dad just says, “we don’t ask questions; we just believe in our cause,” and hysteria begins to invade my steely anger. Finally, Dad looks at me, dread in his frown. He opens his mouth to reprimand me. 

“I should have told them everything,” I bite out, “back in San Diego, I covered for you, did you know that? Even though I ran, I couldn’t go through with it when they really started asking?” Tamara punches the phone next to me, unconcerned. “And you,” I laugh at my memory of the Boss, freely, terrified and lost and so tired of this way of life, “You never apologized, and now you’ve kidnapped this kid for no reason!” I don’t realize I'm yelling until Henry flinches. “Dad, they’re going to kill him.” I don’t say how I know, don’t expressly reference the Boss, but Dad rushes towards me and grips my shoulder roughly. I lose sight of Henry and when all I find is my dad’s grimace I remember who wrapped those bags of candy for my friends. I remember who raised me; quietly, enthusiastically, as he does anything else. 

“Fix the communicator,” he snaps and turns me to his partner. Silently, I take the phone and open the battery compartment. 

Sand falls out. 

“Good thing you don’t ask any questions,” Henry says, his voice trembling a bit; he glances between the three of us with sudden nerves. He’s justified, I know, for a million reasons, the most recent of which being my naming of his death sentence. Or maybe he’s scared we’ll be stranded. Dad turns and shoves him towards the jungle. 

They had me tied down to a metal table, one light in the room hanging right over my head and blinding me. I tried to call for help, but the man that came in was armed and stood by the door. The Boss entered next; when he was done, I swore I'd never leave my father’s side again. I swore on life and limb and only stretched my promise once in the time since, when he was in the hospital. 

Dad lights a fire while Henry reminds me of myself- piping up with shaky insults every once in a while because it’s all he has. Defeated, terrified, and guilty from my outburst and the memories, I sit on a log with my head in my hands and don’t look up when there’s rustling leaves and footsteps. 

“Who are you?” 

“Oh, we’re the Home Office,” says a moderately young voice. My head jerks up and I find a group of boys in cloaks with sticks and messy hair gathered at the edge of the clearing. “Welcome to Neverland,” the boy at the front, tall and carrying not just a branch but a club, continues. his teeth bare in a smirk. 

“The Home Office is a bunch of teenagers?” Tamara asks, and Dad frowns at her and shakes his head, Because we both know it isn’t. I mutter so but thankfully, no one seems to hear- especially the impostors. 

“They’re not teenagers,” Henry disagrees, though it isn’t the most important thing. “They’re the Lost Boys.” 

“Look at that,” the leader pronounces, tilting his head so his ratty blonde hair falls over his eyes. Henry asks why they want to destroy magic. “Who said we’re going to destroy magic?” Tamara argues that it was the mission, but the leader doesn’t react visibly except to look at her through his lashes. “So you were told, yes, now; the boy, hand him over.” 

I’d be lying if I pretended to expect her reaction. Whatever I know about her, it’s mostly that she’s insane and tolerable. Tamara steps in front of Henry and declares, “Not until you tell us the plan- for magic, for getting home.” The leader’s lips twitch whlie I watch him, tense and confused. 

“You’re not getting home.” 

Fuck. 

“Then you’re not getting the boy.” 

“Of course we are.” 

The leader chuckles, and suddenly the wind picks up and a- a dark- shadow? A cloud? It engulfs my father, and he screams, suddenly collapsing, right in front of me. My feet rush towards him of their own shocked accord as Tamara tells Henry to run, but sound goes a bit far away. It's like I’m underwater again, apologizing for everything I've ever done, but Dad doesn’t answer me. He just lays there, and when I set my shaking hand on his neck, I find no pulse. He's pale, cold, stiff. dead. I blink, but my vision narrows, and all I can do is cry over my father’s corpse. 

Tamara’s gasps wake me. She's across the clearing, slapping the ground for my attention, but I don't go to her, shocked by the cold still under my hands and the arrow sticking out of her shoulder. A figure approaches her, one I saw only briefly around Storybrooke, but he’s dressed in leather now. 

“So where is he?” Mr. Gold asks her, either ignoring or not noticing me. She gasps. “There, there, I'll help you speak,” he whispers, and waves his hand, and then the arrow disappears into thin air. She thanks him, again acting against what goals she’s voiced before. Magic. It’s real, and it just saved her life, and selfishly, suddenly, she doesn’t seem to mind it anymore. Even if Dad is my only point of reference for such a subject- and I trust him far too much- I still find my fingers curling with old anger. “Where is Henry?” Mr. Gold asks. “They killed him?” 

Tamara looks around, at me again, and answers, “I don't know; I told him to run, and he did.” He asks where. “The jungle. Pan wants him, he’s behind all of this; look, Mr. Gold, I didn't know who I was working for, I'm sorry about Neal, I'm so sorry.” she sobs as the man kneels in front of her and mutters something I can’t overhear. “Can you forgive me?” She asks, but he shakes his head and then- and then just as quickly as he saved her life, he ends it, reaches into her chest like she’s made of nothing but mist and pulls out something glowing and red and crushes it to dust in his hands as she collapses. Tamara is dead. My dad- my dad is dead, still under my tense grip. I know I'm next. 

Mr. Gold steps over to me and I close my eyes, continue to hold onto my dad’s sleeve. “Did you- love him?” 

Surprised, I answer quickly, honestly, “yes, yes.” 

“He did horrible things, hurt people, and you loved him?” 

I tried to ignore it, the gunshots and screaming. When it did happen. Dad’s not- he wasn’t a fighter. “He’s my dad,” I say, throat tight, and let out a sob, bending over him farther, burying my tears in his cold back. Mr. Gold seems satisfied to listen for now. “I just wanted everything to be normal, no magic, no Home Office,” the words come out with a bite, like a curse. With a shiver, I continue, “I just wanted to go to school and go home and be with my mom and dad, not run around and get trapped underground and-” he crouches, and I stop myself from running as I want to. “Are you going to kill me?” I ask. He shakes his head. “You killed Tamara.” 

“And she killed my son,” he mutters. “Death is contagious.” slowly he reaches out, and I lean away, afraid that he lied and is going to kill me like he very obviously can. But instead, he reaches past me and lays his hand on Dad’s shoulder and then stands. “You can come with me and survive, or be taken by Pan.” 

“I don’t want to leave him yet, he should- they should be buried.” 

“Taken by Pan, then,” Mr. Gold nods, and walks into the forest. Before he’s fully past the treeline, though, he calls back, “would you have left him, given the chance?” I pick up a stick and start digging. 

“I was given the chance. I couldn’t, not in a way that stuck.” 

The sun doesn’t rise. I work for what must be hours, hacking at the earth and hoping I'm really in Neverland where there probably aren’t any gas lines, and occasionally feed the fire for warmth and light. I don’t know who Pan is other than Peter Pan, but it doesn’t seem too farfetched based on what I’ve seen today. or, tonight. In Neverland. Besides, I am my father’s daughter, despite my misgivings about it. Finally there’s enough room for two in the grave, so I lay them down facing each other because she wasn’t my mom, wasn’t maternal at all, but they loved each other. Dad always loved talking to her. As I cover them with dirt, I sob, and as I mark out the grave, I lay down next to it and cry with dirt on my face and in my clothes and under my nails. For long hours I just cry. If I get back to Storybrooke, or to America at all, I’ll be put in a group home for the next few months, and then tossed out on the street. Even when Mom is released from prison, she has nothing. At least I have her. Again- if I get back. 

“What’s your real name?” The voice comes from above, sharp and low and accented, and when I look up at the trees, there sits a figure that I can't see because the fire has died in my anguish. I don't answer. “The Home Office, they had records of you under Robin Mendell, but your father’s name wasn’t his, so I can’t imagine that’s yours.” 

“Who are you?” I ask with a voice much more raw and weak and it usually is. The figure shuffles a bit and then falls, and I scoot away but the young man suddenly visible in the moonlight lands on his feet. 

“I asked you first,” he says, putting his hands on his hips. He's dressed strangely like the boys earlier, loose, torn clothing and moccasins. A leather belt hangs from his shoulder. For the life of me I don’t know how he got into the tree above me and I won’t begin to parse how he landed so easily in the dirt. The very air around him seems thin. Off. 

“That is my name.” 

In a way. “Pretty.” I bristle, and he cuts a dangerous smile like the curl of a knife. Whether or not he meant it as an insult is entirely too vague. “But that isn’t what I asked.” 

“It’s Penelope,” I yield in the face of the threat. “Penelope Flynn.” 

He sways a bit from foot to foot before leaning forward and telling me, “I’m Peter Pan.” Right. Fucking knew it. Barely, I don't let out any more sobs or run or really do anything as he stalks towards me, Looking over the dirt on my face with a gaze I can feel more than watch. The closer he gets, the clearer his features are; shadowed eyes, harsh brows, smart and bony all around but with the stance of someone like the Boss. Someone who might shove me in the back of a car and not take an extra breath. “Do like games, Penelope?” I try to keep my own shoulders straight and don’t answer. Taken by Pan, then? 

“What happened to the Home Office?” 

Pan- and I suppose I’ve never noticed that my name is similar to that of a book character without a pig nose- shrugs and steps away. “That doesn’t matter,” he says, “unless, of course...” frustratingly enough he trails off. As he walks out of the clearing, he calls, “come on, Penelope, there’s food waiting.” I swore I would never leave my dad, but my vow has likely expired with him. Nothing more can be done. So I crouch and draw a flower in the dirt beside my other basic grave markings before following the strange young man into the jungle. 

Food is meat off a spit. There's a pile of knives, and I’ve eaten stranger things in arguably less strange places, so I carve a bite for myself and stare at the fire for a while. My hands long for a pen and paper. If this were a riddle, maybe I might have solved it by now. Peter Pan either is or isn’t working with the Home Office; I can’t discern which is worse. Without knowing what he wants and why, I remember Henry. If Pan is working for the Home Office then Henry is dead. If he isn’t, then what? Without that piece of information I can’t move forward. It’s why I asked him such a thing. The Home Office to me begs caution, and I won’t offend my own experience by ignoring it. 

“Girls are kind of rare here.” Someone sits beside me. “I’m Bee.” 

“Robin,” I answer without thinking. A code name is useless here. Bee, ten at the oldest, grins with crooked teeth and cuts himself some meat. “It’s kind of in the name, Lost Boys.” 

“Oh, there’s been girls, just not many.” I narrow my eyes at the fire- that doesn’t make any sense, for one thing to follow the stories if nothing else does. Neverland is dark, Peter Pan a murderer, Lost Boys not so limited. “Adults are kind of rare, too.” At least that still applies. Trix are for kids, I know. “But now there’s like, six?” He laughs. “Seven, I don’t know.” This catches my attention even more. Mr. Gold- how could I be so stupid? 

“I’ve only seen one, a man named Mr. Gold.” The grave flashes behind my eyes and the log beneath me seems to roll forward, the very ground stolen away. 

“Rumplestiltskin,” I’m brought back quickly enough and look away from the fire. Bee nods, and takes a large bite, but continues to speak through it, pieces of meat flying everywhere. “Yeah, he’s here with all those other adults, trying to get Pan, but they don’t know.” He laughs again. “Pan never fails!” 

“Be quiet,” snaps the boy from earlier, the tall one. He stands from his log on the other side of the spit and bares his teeth at Bee, who yelps and scrambles up and away. I watch him clamber up a tree and hear laughter, and something in the back of my mind connects the command with his name. “Hey,” the boy continues, and I turn to find him much closer and bearing a wooden cup. “Take this,” he orders, handing it to me. Water. He sits where Bee did and rests his club over his knees. “You’ll get a name soon enough.” 

“I already have a small collection,” I remark, but frown once the water is gone. Some webcomic about proliferating standards comes to mind. “Penelope, Robin, thank goodness I don’t have a middle name. What a mess.” The boy chuckles, but it’s lighter than before. Fuck, my heart goes to my throat at the memory, and I nearly vomit. 

“I also have two names: Felix and Slightly,” he admits. I just watch the fire and try to breathe as his voice returns to focus. I ask which I’m supposed to use; he answers Slightly, and I nod. Slightly it is. Fuck. I close my eyes and rub at my brow with dirty, meaty fingertips, my head pounding with grief and terror. What does taken by Pan even mean? I still have a living mother to return to, even if I can’t go to her yet. As far as I know, she’s nice. Yeah, she abandoned me as a child, and yeah, she did something awful enough to end up in prison, but I do need something to hold on to. 

Pan makes his presence known somehow, catching everyone’s attention by the fire. Slightly only watches the spit while almost everyone else’s head turns, but his lips twitch visibly. The paradoxically silent and obvious footsteps pause for a second directly behind the two of us. “Making a friend?” 

“No,” Slightly answers, nearly interrupting him. Pan huffs and sits on my other side. “Don’t you-“ 

“Maybe I want to know what’s so interesting about Penelope here.” He knocks his knuckle against the wooden cup and it fills with water before my eyes. “You might be clever, but that could have just as easily been a misstep.” 

“It’s very difficult to interest Pan,” Slightly murmurs. They speak so strangely, like they’re jumping between narration and dialogue instead of really just talking. “Like a goldfish.” 

Pan grips the log next to my hip and leans over me to bare his teeth at Slightly, who bares his teeth right back which only prompts Pan forward, so I’m caught under the pressure of Pan’s shoulder dragging against my collarbone. He doesn’t lean back until Slightly does, but he doesn’t lean back entirely, remaining damn near. “I'm waiting, then,” he declares, face only inches from my own. I gulp, and his gaze flies to my throat, or what he can see of it from his perspective. If he’s speaking to me, it isn’t immediately obvious, his expression trancelike for a minute. 

“Okay,” I say, which doesn’t make any sense but his eyes clear and his slow frown says he has no clue what I’m talking about but I don’t, either. Up close, with the fire, his eyes are still dark and his brows are still sharp, face so defined. He quirks a brow, and then nods. As if that was answer enough. I suppose it could be. Something must call his attention away because he stands and leaves an eerie vacuum beside me when he disappears into the night without a step taken. In the wake of him I struggle to breathe and Slightly, the asshole, seems to be holding in another laugh. 

I settle into the deep hollow of a tree and don’t sleep, but it feels safer than out in the open. My body shouts at me in exhaustion. Something’s missing, though, my heart just healed enough from losing my dad that I’m between passing out and settling down. He never told me outright that his line of work could be dangerous. The only threat I witnessed was the Home Office, though I doubt he saw it that way. It hurts even to remember the things that frustrated me about my dad; surrounded by sniffling from around the camp, I feel trapped. Like I’ll never get to see my mother. Slightly, Pan, and Bee all made it seem normal. Like it’s just the way of things. But Pan is clearly the one who got us here, and I'm certain he can get me back. If he so wishes. 

The sun still doesn’t rise. 

I step out of the tree when someone restarts the fire and begins to cook. It’s as good an opportunity as any to warm my own frozen joints to the tune of fat spitting in the licks of flame. The ghostly pale boy cooking introduces himself tersely as Nibs and lets me try turning the spit. I'm not very good at it, and my arms waver more with physical weakness than with grief and nerves and chill. Nibs laughs with the right hush of early morning and then stops, expression carefully blank, looking behind me even with his just-unfocused eyes. 

“This looks brilliant,” Pan says, coming up next to me and nodding to the spit. His voice is almost as identifiable as his atmosphere; my hands begin to twitch with shivers even though I’ve already warmed them up. “Where’d you get it?” 

“The eastern lake,” Nibs answers, his buck-toothed smile returning. Pan congratulates him and flicks his hands; suddenly a length of fabric appears in his grip, billowing dangerously close to the flames. If he offers, I take too long to respond, so he tosses it over my shoulder and the ties of the evident cloak twist together on their own. Okay. At the very least, I won't freeze to death. It’s yet to be determined if he’ll kill me some other way or if I’ll simply suffocate in the odd space around him. Nibs and I watch as he disappears into the jungle. “You alright?” 

“I-“ what a question! My dad died in front of me, on this island, because of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys, yesterday, or a couple hours ago, or when is the sun gonna rise? I sit and bury my head in my hands, rubbing at my eyes. Nibs continues to turn the spit. “I have no way to tell if anyone’s about to kill me. Are you?” It’s a dumb question. Nibs doesn’t answer, and Slightly appears as I sigh and open my eyes. Or swaggers, more than appears, between two trees and bearing his club. 

“He likes you,” he says vaguely, and sets the club down to help with the fire. 

“Who?” I ask even though it couldn’t be anyone but Pan; Slightly just looks at me for a moment, so I shake my head. “I’m going to die, aren’t I.”

“Pan isn’t going to hurt you.” 

“Because I have a cloak.” Both lost boys nod. Great. 

“Robin?” My head spins so quick I pull a muscle; there Henry stands half out of a tent, and I hurry over to him. “What’s going on? Did Pan trick you, too?” 

“I don’t know yet.” When he shivers, guilt and hot shame wash over me- my own father is responsible for this. Maybe it’s better I’m still here, and I should try to make up for his mistakes. “Are you okay?” 

Henry shivers again, “I’m fine.” He looks around at the tents, the fire with Slightly and Nibs staring at us, the jungle, my new cloak. “Have you really been working for Peter Pan this whole time, while Tamara manipulated my dad?” 

My face runs suddenly warm but given the Lost Boys’ careful gazes, it’s probably best that I didn’t immediately hand over Pan’s gift. Who knows what kind of consequences that would’ve had. We walk to the other side of the fire. “The Home Office is real,” I tell him quietly, “it’s an organization that tries to find and destroy magic whenever possible.” He frowns, and points out what Slightly said when we first met him, but I shake my head. “I don’t know anything about Peter Pan, but I know the Home Office all too well. I’ve been to their headquarters.” 

“Are they- would they do what you said, if they took me there instead of here?” 

“Probably, but I also don’t know if this is any better,�� I answer honestly. “Peter Pan arranged for us to come here, not the Home Office.” Henry nods. “They do have their eye on Storybrooke, though, especially after the last few weeks.” 

“My moms can take ‘em,” Henry decides, and because he’s eleven or something, I agree quietly and leave it there. Slightly gives me a look I can’t read through the flames; Nibs just makes Henry help with the spit. 

“Did you not like my gift, Penelope?” A vacuum that’s beginning to get familiar forms when I lean in to the flames to rub my hands together. “Poor Henry’s shivering and you didn’t think it was good enough to give him.” Pan stands with his moccasins almost buried in old ash from past fires, the light turning his bare ankles brown and red. 

“I didn’t think,” I excuse, and go to unfasten the ties when they bind further under my hands, nearly swallowing my fingers. My mouth goes dry and I worry it’ll keep going, grip my throat, so I jam my hands above the collar. Pan doesn’t laugh when the ties stop, but his eyes do when I look up in panic and shame. Like he would have kept going if I hadn’t reacted. 

“No, Henry, you need a cloak of your own, yes?” He suggests, stepping between us and sending a bolt of fear down my spine. It’s an innocent enough idea but my heart pounds. “We can make you a new one.” I nod and decide to never make such a mistake again. Or at least try. It seemed wise- but maybe that’s the problem. Didn’t he ask if I like games? He leads me and Henry into another clearing with tools laid around in the dirt. “In fact,” he continues, “why don’t you make it together, so Penelope can approve of it.” 

I feel the obligation to apologize, but don’t say anything. Henry is quiet when Pan leaves. “I thought your name was Robin.”

“It is.” 

“Oh.” Neither of us know how to sew, but we begin to figure something out among the fabric scraps and sticks and twisted stems. The other Lost Boys begin to wake for breakfast but neither of us move to get any. “How much does the Home Office know about magic?” He asks after a while. 

“I was the lookout,” I admit, and take a deep breath to stop the tears. “My dad never told me anything except that stuff like this exists. I was gonna get out.” Since that doesn’t seem possible anymore, if it ever did with how powerful the Home Office seems to be, I try to imagine what could have been. “My mom’s in prison. He didn’t know I knew her, but I kept track of her, wrote stuff down so I wouldn't forget.” 

“My mom went to prison too. I was born there.” I'm starting to think Henry's family is incredibly strange. “What did they do to you?” Henry surprises me, but thankfully we’re interrupted by the Lost Boys rushing out of the camp with whoops and hollers. The kid runs after them, but it becomes quickly evident that the Lost Boys know where they’re going and Henry doesn’t. I make sure to keep both the kid and the camp in sight so he can’t get turned around. “What do you think’s going on?” 

“Pirates, aliens,” I throw out weakly. Best to pretend he didn’t ask the other question. “Maybe they act on a hive mind, and Peter Pan just called them all to look at a cool rock.” 

“Maybe my family’s here.” 

This I already figured out. Slightly didn’t seem happy about Bee telling me, but Henry seems overjoyed at the idea, so I don't reject it. Don’t remind him what happened yesterday when adults came to visit. We walk back to the camp and Henry happily occupies himself with the cloak, but I lose focus. Only a Lost Boy jumping down from his half-finished hammock snaps me back to attention. “So, you’re the kid Pan’s been looking for all this time,” he directs at Henry. 

“Ask him,” Henry grumbles, and a few other Lost Boys approach to poke and prod at him. They get my best glare when I try to step into the middle of it. “Robin, it’s fine.” 

The first boy scoffs. “If you can’t take some teasing without your big sister, how are you going to handle what Pan has in store for you?” He picks up a stick and encourages Henry to pick up his own while I'm overpowered by Nibs and another child. I shake them off, but stay put while the pair dance around the tools on the ground and fight. 

“Not bad,” Pan decides, from behind me; immediately, as is apparently usual, the crowd falls silent and stops moving like the vacuum around Pan is greedy for time itself. Henry flushes and looks down at the stick in his hand. “But wouldn’t it be more fun if you had real swords?” 

“I’ve never used a real sword,” Henry says, and Pan steps past me to whisper something in his ear. Henry's branch becomes metal within a shallow breath, and he suddenly charges at the Lost Boy while I struggle against Nibs and the other kid’s renewed grips. He’s a child, for fucks sake, and not a feral one like the Lost Boys all seem to be- but that very nature of the ones holding on to me puts me at a disadvantage. The Lost Boys cheer and yell and whoop and holler and bang sticks together with renewed vigor as Henry sets a series of blows upon the other boy. The one defending himself still only has a stick, and Henry ends up drawing blood. As if he’s the one hurt, he freezes and blurts, “I'm so sorry, it was an accident!” 

Pan laughs, though, and asks him, “don’t you know the best part about being a Lost Boy?” He rests a hand on Henry's shoulder. “You never apologize.” Then he raises Henry's hand, and the Lost Boys continue to shout and cheer, and the kid smiles. 

I’m feeding the fire when Nibs comes up and tells me I'm relieved. “You did this earlier,” I point out, and he shakes his head. 

“I earned my name. Just go.” 

He doesn’t say where, but with such a dismissal, it must be at least twenty feet away. I haven’t gone much farther than that from the fire except when Henry chased the Lost Boys out of the camp, but in all honesty it’s all I can do to feel safe. If I can’t extend the favor to Henry with his newfound comraderie, I’ll keep it for myself. So I wander the edge of my self-imposed border until the damp woodsy air shifts and the hair on the back of my neck prickles. No one else around the camp reacts. I pick up my feet and duck against a thick tree, hoping to ground myself with the bark. It feels like I’m being misted- drowned, really- and my hands don’t find any purchase. My gaze wanders and I find someone looking back at me from the far side of the camp, amidst the tents and, deeper in the jungle, a couple of hammocks. 

Slightly doesn’t move from where he’s in a similar position to me, an unbothered mirror image. I can barely identify him from so far away. And yet. My mind registers when the eye contact breaks and he looks at something beside me. 

A shiver runs down my spine even though I’m overheating. Slightly doesn’t look back at me; instead, he glides smoothly from view without breaking his own line of sight until he’s entirely gone. And he doesn’t appear on the other side of the trunk, either. I look frantically around the camp for Slightly, or Henry, or Nibs or even Pan but I can’t find anything or anyone that I can really label. The breaths I yank in are unfulfilling and wet. 

The light burned at my eyes and the cold metal table bit at my thighs and shoulders even through my clothes. My bindings were some kind of fabric or leather that scratched the thin insides of my wrists and my neck, made my calves itch. Every detail demanded attention, even the pressure inside my shoes where they perched at the edge of the table. There were no movies or puzzles or memories I could call upon; everything was new, everything was threatening. I pushed against the restraints and they gave only enough to itch further. The Boss checked each one and seemed satisfied enough to keep me where I was. He turned away to speak, or it sounded like he did, because my eyes wouldn’t adjust to the stark difference between the lighting on the table and the lighting in the room. He said something about carbon and a mask was pushed around my nose and mouth that almost seemed to push air into my lungs. Metallic, plastic, pure air. My eyes began to flutter and I couldn’t hold my squint. Everything was so cold. 

It didn’t hurt then. The pain came much later, but I couldn’t tell my dad, so I went to school and blocked out nearly three weeks of material. No, during, it was like coming in from the cold and wrapping my stuff fingers around a steaming mug of cocoa. Some kind of assistant moved my shirt away from my stomach and stuffed other fabric in its place beneath my back. It was cold and hot, and I had goosebumps that didn’t fade. Like an icicle beneath my skin, where it shouldn’t be, finding all the warmth of my blood and scaring it away. The roof was hot and I ran from it; the room was cold and I could do nothing. My lungs and throat dried with that steady flow of air but I didn’t scream once. 

“No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true…”

A murmured lullaby wakes me to the rhythm of fingers carding through my hair. I blink and there’s Peter Pan kneeling over me, something plush at my back and soft words falling from his mouth. He keeps singing as I try to relax. His ministrations are nice; beyond neat, I feel clean. Again I wonder what carries from the snippets of fairytales I heard at school. 

“What-“ I croak and my throat seizes in a cough. Pan bends further and guides me upright with little difficulty.  

“The mermaids bathed you,” he mutters and continues to comb my hair. I’ve never known it to be all that silken, especially when wet- even more especially when wet with salt water- but his hand glides through. “You might taste salt for a while; Henry chewed their ears off when he saw them mistake your gasping for that of a fish on land.” I roll my tongue against my teeth and find what he means as he stops to hum more of the lullaby. “I won’t pretend it wasn’t funny. He could be so much more powerful, you know, if he wasn’t so tense.” 

There’s nothing for me to say, so I don’t speak. Fortunately this doesn’t seem to be a problem. 

“A dream is a wish your heart makes...”

Henry ignores Pan entirely when we return to the camp through winding paths that I couldn’t recount given a lifetime. Instead he damn near tackles me in a hug, made heavier by his loosely finished cloak. He only reaches my shoulders but makes up for it with enthusiasm. All I’m left to do is watch Pan walk away; he turns just before entering the largest tent and I swear delicate fingertips kiss my eyelids until they close. He’s gone with them. 

“Tootles brought you to the mermaids, and I told them to keep your clothes on, but then they started drowning you-“ 

“Henry.” It’s true, my clothes are starchy with dried seawater. Henry looks up from where he’s been practically shoving his face into my armpit. I’m honestly not sure what to say, but I thank him for his help and he nods. 

Then says, “I have a therapist. You can go see him when we get back.” 

Oh. Wow. 

Something of my dread and offense must show on my face because he scrambles to insist that therapy is an important thing for everyone no matter how supposedly healthy, but I worried him when I was hyperventilating and unresponsive. A nearby Lost Boy snorts. Blah blah, I think, do I look like some kind of orphan with PTSD or something? 

“Whatever,” I grumble and remove the kid from my person. A dry ache invades as if I was actually in that room again, but it fades when I stand nearer to the bonfire. Bee claims Henry’s attention. 

Nibs claims mine. “Music’s starting soon.” If that means anything, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem important. “Slightly and me are gonna hunt early tomorrow. You should sleep through the festivities and come with us.” He isn’t cooking, but his hands weave between licks of flame and I wonder if the roughness to his skin is a consequence. 

“I don’t know how.” 

“You know some.” 

My stomach turns over again, but Nibs even doesn’t look at me, let alone apologize. Our conversation is cut short by an earthquake, or what feels like one, though, so I leave him and look around for somewhere safe when it dawns on me that I’m the only thing shaking. It’s a pleasant hum, though, after a moment. One I can and do settle into. Like drumming. Like a heart. Low tones filter through the air around me like fog and birdsong and crowded school hallways. I yearn for the idea as suddenly as it clears further into a melody, then further into Peter Pan and his flute at the center of everyone’s attention. Nibs mentioned festivities- they begin as Pan shifts the song without a break and the Lost Boys begin to chant, dance, sing along. They gather instruments and not-instruments alike to join the performance. Henry, eyes closed, cloak tangling with the buttons of his shirt, moves from Pan’s side and the attention moves with him. 

Peter Pan transforms from ringleader to puppet master before my eyes; neither is likely true, but I don’t much care. Instead I retreat towards the tents and the jungle until my head pounds a little quieter. The music- Pan’s heartbeat, if he has one- lulls me to sleep soon after I find another hollow tangle of roots. 

Slightly and Nibs are having a silent conversation above me when I wake up. There’s no noise in the entire camp, in fact; even the jungle sleeps. My stomach alerts them I’ve woken up and Nibs hands me a waterskin to tide me over. Slightly offers me a spear that I’m not sure I can refuse. My socks and shoes were lost to the mermaids, so we set out as quiet as can be through the trees with Nibs’ skin the only thing I can really see. When he ducks and his cloak falls over him, I’m as good as blind, simply trusting that he hasn’t taken any sudden turns and left me to wander. We’ve been up and about for a while when Slightly’s hand lands on my shoulder and the wind picks up. 

“This way,” he whispers, before darting between broad leaves. I follow the subtle sounds of greenery shifting, spear as ready as I can make it; I’m not a fighter, I tell myself, my dad wasn’t a fighter, and I’m not a fighter. The wind picks up further and Slightly moves too far ahead for me to listen to his trail, but the trees above sway and a sliver of moonlight catches on Nibs’ hand against a tree trunk ahead of me. We regroup in a tunnel between bare trees and salted rock, sea air soaring through, and Slightly motions for me to wait where the trees thicken again and the gusts are filtered by ferns and thorns. “We don’t have time right now for you to prick yourself with Nightshade, so resist the temptation,” he mutters right against the shell of my ear with a chilly puff of air and such a deep-baked stench to him that I hold my own breath. Finally, he adjusts my grip on the spear and disappears almost as quickly as Pan. I lean away from the thorns. I’m not left waiting for too long, but the moments stretch with how my eyes burn. 

A harsh gust of wind carries something my body is aware of but can’t identify- something in the sky. It drops, then soars away, leaving its load to fall into the branches and then to the rock. I step forward with the spear out- this must be what we’re hunting- and then the Knight lifts his head and looks directly at me where I’ve placed myself in a moonbeam. 

“What-” 

Slightly and Nibs sneak up on him from behind. “Welcome home, Baelfire,” Slightly greets him. “Pan will be so happy to see you.” They knock him dizzy and bind his arms while I sputter. 

“I- he-” it makes sense that Henry’s father would come to rescue him, but Henry didn’t mention it. Only his mothers, the sheriff and the mayor. “How many of them are here now?” 

“Seven now. Bee can’t count.” Or keep a secret. Without Mr. Gold or Knight, there are five adults on the island. I figure Slightly isn’t factoring my dad or Tamara, so I assume the sheriff and the mayor are two, leaving three that I don’t know. Nibs directs me to help him lift Knight to his feet and we start along the path of salt-poisoned trees. 

Nibs turns his head to me, eyes still lazily wandering ahead of us, and murmurs, “you lied.” This doesn’t bode well for my safety or sanity. “And I was wrong. You don’t just know some; could’a done this on your own.” Does he know that’s worse? I stare down at the spear, visibility better with fewer trees around. Not good enough, however, for me to catch through my horror that Knight has worked himself free and knocked Slightly out cold. It only comes to my attention when Nibs starts running and gets a half-rotted branch thrown at him. 

“Slightly,” I gasp, and rush over to the limp Lost Boy as Nibs soldiers on. “Hey, wake up, asshole,” I tell him without really thinking. He blinks and groans, then jumps up with my help and we follow the bootprint trail until we find Nibs standing over three Lost Boys. 

“Fast for such an old man,” Nibs huffs. 

“He had help.” Slightly decides and limps forward, cradling his head, to examine one of the kids. “Magic. Let’s get them back to camp.” 

Pan notices us immediately as we shuffle into view of the camp. In a blink he goes from forty to two feet away, eyes blazing even in the dark. “What happened.” 

“Baelfire got away.” 

He takes a glance at the kids slumbering on despite how rocky the trip back was and grins. “The Dark One. So father and son have been reunited.” 

“We should move the boy.” 

“Now, Felix, where’s your sense of adventure? The fun’s about to begin.” My exhausted lungs empty when Pan’s attention shifts to me. “Tamsin and the twins can go to the healing tent.” He steps forward until we’re face to face in the dark and those dancing fingertips brush some of my hair away from my neck. “Looks like you picked up more from the Home Office than you think you did.” 

Indignant, I sniff. His nearness isn’t as offending as Slightly’s- he might even be freshly washed- but his words cut much deeper. “I’m not-“ 

“-your father, yes, note the glaring difference between you now.” 

My stomach twists and I taste bile, all of my body straining under Tootles’ weight and my own grief and disgust. This- this asshole- “Pan,” I growl, and his grin is visible in shadow. 

“You really are fun,” he muses, and pinches the side of my neck, his fingernails digging in like teeth. “Penelope.” 

In a moment he’s gone, so I don’t wonder why he said my name so quietly. I just take Tootles to the tent that Slightly and Nibs reach a few minutes before me given their established lifestyles. With food in my hands and the spear put away I notice all the splinters and scrapes building up from wandering the jungle barefoot and bare-handed. Scabs from dry vines and the several tree trunks I’ve cling to litter my arms where my sleeves dried shorter than they’re meant to. Dirt piles up beneath all my nails and in the shallow lines of my knuckles. My feet are caked with mud and debris. The food is ashy and it’s validating to see Nibs drop his serving into the fire with a scowl. 

“You need to clean up, and the vernal pool has a patch of berries,” he says, and nothing else, so I follow him out of the camp again. Tootles and the twins join us with only slight breaks to their steps, but they make it a little less awkward to strip down to my underwear and get to washing. Nibs reclines half-submerged at one edge of the water and picks the berries he can reach, tossing them to each of us in turn. 

“Robin,” Tootles starts after a splash war with the twins dies down and she wades over to join Nibs in gathering fruit. “Why did you dig that hole?” 

For a moment I don’t understand. And then I remember throwing myself to the earth. “It’s what people do when they- when,” I tell her, but don’t really finish my sentence, the word choking itself out of my throat. “They return to the earth, and you can sit with them.” 

“You haven’t gone back.” 

“An opportunity, not a commitment. It’s tradition.” 

Tootles hums around a berry. “No one’s ever done that, here. They get dragged into the water sooner or later, either by their traveling companions or by the mermaids.” 

The thought disgusts me. I scrub harshly at my knuckles until the scabs open. “Well, I did it.” Nibs throws me a berry and it begins to sink a bit in the muddied, bloodied water, but I catch it and eat it anyways. “My mom might make us headstones, but I doubt she’ll be able to afford it for a while.” 

“Headstones?” 

“She can’t afford rocks?” 

“They’re carved,” I specify, “and she’s in prison, so she can’t afford anything.” 

“What did she do?” 

I make a face. I still don’t know, and I’ll never find out. Nibs throws another berry. I sit on a mossy rock so the water reaches my shoulders and I can rinse my hair of sweat. When I don’t answer, they move on. We wash and eat for a while waiting for our clothes to dry by a small fire the twins set up. We only head back when Tootles gets bored and starts smearing mud on her face; it’s all in all a nice afternoon, or evening, or whatever time it is. No sun is starting to fuck with my head. Only the first and slowest mind game of Pan’s, I’m sure, and he provides another when we reach the camp. 

“Took you long enough,” he calls, posed as if checking a watch. But he doesn’t move, and after a moment the twins rush over to him and ask what’s wrong. “It’s our move. See who you can wake up with some of the reserve water,” he tells them lowly and then turns his head just barely when they scurry off. “Tamsin, if you don’t mind, I’ve got ink on my hand. Be careful, or you won’t move for days.” 

The camp is back in motion, dozing Lost Boys rejuvenated, within minutes. Or, a few of them are. Whatever the twins are using is a limited resource. Weapons are amassed and limp bodies are dragged into their tents to recover. I’m just tucking in Curly- nicknamed aptly- when I notice. 

“Where’s Henry?” 

Pan doesn’t tell me, which is as good an answer as any, though I’m not entirely sure who I’m rooting for. “There is a thing that nothing is, and yet it has a name. It's sometimes tall and sometimes short, joins our talks, joins our sport, and plays at every game.” But he leaves before I can begin to guess. The tie of my cloak that I only just managed to loosen back at the pool binds itself in his wake. 

Does it even matter who came for Henry? I doubt it makes a difference. Mr. Gold destroyed Tamara without losing any breath himself. Whoever is here, they can’t be more powerful than that, and if they are? Pan’s fucked. His theatrics and manipulation pale in comparison. Yes, of course, any old human like Tamara or my dad could die anytime to a blown tire or a sinkhole or a particularly determined Canadian goose. But to be murdered- I shiver- and so easily means that any skill my father may have passed on to me is useless. My chances are slim. Curly stumbles out of his tent and throws me a salute. 

“Do you know the fairytale?” 

How Bee manages to sneak up on anyone given his talkative nature is beyond me. “Which fairytale?” I ask. 

“The one with Peter Pan, Captain Hook, the Lost Boys, and Never Never Land.” 

“I thought I did.” 

“Not the truth, Robin, the story.” When is a mind like a fairytale? When it’s made up. I prompt him to tell me. “There once was a boy who lived in a land of dreams, and he didn’t want to grow up, so he didn’t. One day he lost his shadow. You need a shadow, right, to walk in the sun and dance around a fire! So he left his home in search of it. Wendy Darling, who had imagined him up and taken him on so many adventures in Never Never Land and told of his duels against the pirate Captain Hook, found his shadow and caught it. When the boy showed up, she sewed his shadow back onto his feet and he brought her and her brothers to Never Never Land with him. They wanted to stay, and the Lost Boys there were ever grateful that she gave them life and a home, but to stay, she would have to never grow up. That was the rule, you know, but she wasn’t so sure about it. They asked her to stay, to be their mother, and they asked her to tell them all the stories she had told her brothers. But she gathered her brothers and, in exchange for a thimble and a promise, Peter Pan returned them to their house. She grew up and couldn’t return, but she passed the story on.” 

“I don’t think I’ve heard that version,” I admit. “It’s usually just a kiss.” 

“What’s usually a kiss?” 

“The thimble and the promise.” Thinking back, though, they may have called it a thimble. “There was something about a bird, too, but,” Bee quiets as I think. “We watched Fantasia when I was in fourth grade, and then my teacher found out I’d never seen any Disney movies. I didn’t understand Fantasia at all, I mean, no Disney in my household.” That teacher tried so hard to fill me in on what I had missed. The TV cart is a clearer memory than any math I learned that year. 

“I don’t know what knees or a fan have anything to do with it, but the story will always be different. It isn’t true, so there’s no one version.” 

The Lost Boys march into camp and deposit Henry on a rotten log as I nudge Bee in thanks. “I think I can see that.” He laughs loudly, as he is still Bee, and nudges me back. 

“I just wanted to help with your riddle.” 

Oh. I tilt my head at Bee, stiff and surprised, but he gets up and scampers off to bother someone else. Of course Pan’s riddle has something to do with him. One way or another, it has to. Sometimes tall and sometimes short- maybe the Lost Boys? Joining every game? I run through the riddle a few times in my mind. 

Pan crouches over Henry as soon as I do. We watch him slumber on as the other Lost Boys around the camp start to drag themselves awake. On a whim, and on the subject, I decide to recite a riddle of my own. 

“It goes through the door without pinching. It sits on the stove without burning. It rests on the table, unashamed.” 

He’s utterly still. “You could answer mine just as easily.” 

“How about we trade hints?” It’s a gamble that doesn’t feel even remotely necessary, but he nods, so I say, “I miss it.” 

“I don’t.” 

Henry shifts and groans a bit as I take in the new information. It can’t be the Lost Boys, then, or I suppose it could- he doesn’t have to miss them, since he’s always with them. 

“What happened?” Henry brings my attention back to him. Pan’s brow twitches. 

“You fell asleep.” When Henry stiffens, he continues, “oh, don’t worry, it was just a little catnap. Night’s still young.” 

Something about the sentence makes me hold back nervous laughter while I settle in the dirt. “Wait, I- I remember something. My dad, when I was asleep, I-“ he looks at me with more pity than a ten year old should have. “I could’ve sworn I heard him calling for me.” 

“Really?” Pan says quickly, just stretched out enough that it seems like the flick of his eyes to me is anything but a warning. I suppose that settles where Henry was when the Lost Boys all fell asleep. Father and son reunited, indeed. 

“It must’ve been a dream.” 

“Well, how can you be sure?” 

“Because.” Henry throws me another pitying frown. A guilty frown. A pained- I can’t read the kid, really, but he says, “cause my dad’s dead.” 

I blurt “no” before my head catches up and starts piecing things together that I don’t want to make sense of. “He was with… Tamara…” shit. Didn’t Mr. Gold already tell me this? That Tamara killed Neal Cassidy, that death is contagious? Oh, shitting hell… Henry sets a light hand on my shoulder as if I’m the one in need to comfort here. As if! “Henry, I’m so sorry,” I beg of the kid, guilt building upon guilt; it was expressly my job to make sure they could do theirs, and while I didn’t do it enthusiastically, being an accomplice to murder is a new line to me. Or whatever it is that makes Henry and Tamara and Mr. Gold so sure Knight is dead when I just saw him a few hours ago. 

Pan shifts in the dirt. I bite my tongue. “I’m sorry too, Henry; it makes sense for us to dream about the things we’ve lost and the things we hoped for, like your father being alive and your mother coming to find you. But eventually, you’ll find new things to dream about- and when you do, they’ll start to come true.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Because that’s what I did,” Pan answers easily, mirth lighting his expression, “and now you’re here. Neverland used to be a place where new dreams were born. You can bring that magic back, Henry, and we can be your family.” As if moving through mud, he reaches between us and combs his fingers through my hair, smooth as anything. He says something more to Henry that I don’t catch, lost to a thumping in my stomach when the only thing of Pan’s attention that remains on me is his wrist, limp on my shoulder. The vacuum is starting to take my flesh the way black holes eat anything they can reach. Greedy. Hungry. If it’s intentional, I can’t tell. I’m not even sure I care. “Penelope.” 

Henry is long gone when I blink and find Pan. A tension has appeared in his expression, but it clears when I shake my head in a shudder. “What?” 

“It’s sunlight, isn’t it?” He surprises me by saying; it is. When I don’t answer quickly enough, he pulls my elbow until we’re both standing and mutters directly into my ear, breath cold, “close your eyes.” I do. “Neverland is a place where time stands still. The night suits me for now, but it doesn’t always. Magic, of course, always comes with a price.” 

My father hated it. “What really happened?” 

“That’s for another time. I’ve brought you to the day, Penelope, open your eyes and step into it.” 

And he’s right, I discover, wincing at the adjustment before rushing out from the treeline towards a rocky cliff over the water. Salt and sun dig into my skin and breathe life into me in a way I didn’t think necessary until it left me- at fourteen, I had enough of the sun. Now, I’m starved for it. Birds sing behind me and squawk before me, and creatures dance in the water that I can’t identify. Probably because of the distance. Mostly. Content absorbing energy and warmth from the light, I settle on my back despite the stone underfoot. It feels good. Pan’s words don’t escape me so soon, though. 

“What did the cloak cost?” 

Pan doesn’t answer for a moment, and I squint against the daylight to check if he’s done something awful or left. Instead he merely watches from the treeline. “Isn’t it obvious?” He wonders, as if that’s ever gotten anyone anywhere. I hold back a scowl despite how pinched my features probably already are. “You’re a Lost Boy.” 

I’m not a boy, I don’t say, though Tootles doesn’t seem to be, either. Hardly stops her. Instead I sit up and face the treeline so my face falls into shadow and I don’t have to squint. He doesn’t step forward. I’m still not sure who I’m really rooting for- Pan has taken over the Home Office in some capacity, which appeals to me, but with that power he organized all this, which doesn’t appeal to me at all. “What does this cost?” He waves his hand broadly, still keeping to the shade, and a wall of vines that I thought were covering a boulder brush themselves away from a natural looking archway. I stand and look past it to find a spring clearer than any water I’ve ever seen. 

“Have a drink, and enjoy yourself. Stay however long you like,” Pan murmurs, appearing behind my shoulder as soon as I move through the arch. I jump, but the vines have settled again. Hang on- why isn’t he stepping into the sunlight? Why does the night suit him right now? He looks like he’s about to turn and go when I speak. 

“Your shadow.” You need one to walk in the sun and dance around a fire, Bee said! Of course- he doesn’t miss it probably because he gave it up, tore it from his body the same way Dad had his stolen as he died. A predictable accompaniment for most creatures, but not Peter Pan. It works. 

We’re at an odd angle, looking at each other but too close. “What’s been around for eons, but is no more than a month old?” 

“The moon,” I answer easily, though it comes from one of my books. At least when I first read it, I worked for however long it took to come up with it myself. But now it’s just familiar. A beat passes with just the echo of running water in the not-quite-cave. “A man’s title, bread, a motion, cookware.” One of my friends- in those times when I was at school enough to gather any- came up with such a riddle after I tricked them with Einstein’s impossible one. But I cut out the item that would reveal the answer immediately to my audience: one boy. I never solved the riddle myself, though I intended to. My friend took pity on my hair pulling within just an hour. 

The one boy seems to read me, his gaze dancing from detail to detail that I couldn’t follow if I tried, even at this distance. Then he’s gone, and with his absence air rushes into the space he took up beside me and in my lungs. 

There seem to be few choices, with Peter Pan. No room for argument or suggestion. My cloak, which unwinds itself and floats delicately off my shoulders and onto the spring’s rocky edge, was a gift. I didn’t ask for it; Pan himself even called it a gift, from him to me, when I didn’t pass it on to Henry. In speaking about price he implied that I paid for the cloak by joining the Lost Boys. Maybe, though, he paid for a gift by letting me into the Lost Boys. Or maybe Dad paid for the cloak and Lost Boy title by dying. What does the sun cost, then? It cuts through the rock above as if the spring is in a stone vase and lights up the water until everything sparkles. The far wall bears the source of sound, a rapid spout. Again I only have implications- is drinking the spring water paying for the light? Again this wasn’t something I asked for, though. I’m not certain I’ve asked for a single thing since coming to Neverland. That doesn’t seem to matter with Peter Pan. 

He returns after I drink and don my cloak, though it doesn’t tie itself until he’s near. “Is that really all the sun you can take?” My mouth dries of words. Is that really all he’ll give me? It’s been all of an hour! 

“Humans are typically diurnal,” I say, but it comes out quiet and clumsy, “the body has- cycles-“ 

“Do you think I’m not human?” 

“You’re-“ I don’t know. Pan said- Pan said- “time stands still in Neverland, and yet it passes. There’s a past here, for me; not everything is happening together as I observe it. I walked, I spoke, I drank, and now I speak again. It would all be indistinguishable and full of paradoxes if time were truly still.” 

“Say what you mean.” 

Rich, coming from him. But I don’t know what I mean. “Time doesn’t really stand still here, does it? The Lost Boys sleep, the fire dies down, my stomach growls. It’s- it’s-“ I don’t fucking know! The front of my cloak is suddenly yanked forward and I stumble towards where Pan has settled in the available shade. I jerk my head up, keep an eye on him, in close quarters once again but this time the ties don’t loosen because he has one hand twisted in my collar. Even without his vacuum I would be choking. “It’s you.” 

“Seems we’re good at solving two riddles in one, Penelope.” My face heats even with my lungs working with the bare minimum. And his- his face- he’s murderous, gleeful, focused. His dark eyes sparkle but his frown is stiff. “For our next pair, remember what you said about the story of Never Never Land. If you break me I do not stop working; if you touch me I may be snared; if you lose me nothing will matter.” Pan looks below my eyes, then meets me again. “I claim the space beside you.” 

Mentally I divide his words into pieces like a puzzle: what’s usually a kiss, the new riddle, the matching pair. “Promise?” I ask, and he provides the thimble. I’ve never kissed anyone before, nor been kissed, not in ways that matter. But the delicate slant of Pan’s mouth to my cheek is significant enough to forget any similar experience. I find my breath again. 

What does this mean? Is it a good idea? Do I have a choice, can I reject whatever deal Pan has set on my soul? All questions not worth asking. 

“It’s been a long day for you,” he decides. “Go rest in the sun outside, and I’ll send Felix to wake you.” 

I dream of two brothers: the older a Captain, the younger a Lieutenant. They sail together on a Pegasus to a land of dreams. The sun is bright and soft, the sky bluer, water clearer than either of them could fathom. Perfect waves rock their boat as they release the anchor and paddle to shore with their best scouts. All through the journey they grin, honored to be given their mission and awestruck at the magic they’ve witnessed. The older walks just ahead, and they split from the scouts, all with scrolls stowed in their coats. By order of the King they’ll find their bounty. A medicinal plant. They begin their search, trusting the scouts to find and report or neutralize any threats, or to gather the plant themselves should they come upon it, when a boy makes himself known; he’s odd, doesn’t understand their mission, turns them against each other. The boy insists that the plant will decimate populations with a mere nick. That it is a poison without an antidote, even for those gifted with unusually long lives. His eyes sparkle oddly with youth that doesn’t match his words. Nervous, the younger brother turns to the Captain and wonders if he’s correct. They argue, pushing each other to be noble and compassionate in turn, when the older brother marches up to the bush they were led to and drags a thorn across his arm. He falls. The younger brother pays with currency he can’t comprehend just for a few more hours- and then he’s alone. He curses the King’s lie. 

Slightly nudges my arm with a mud-caked foot. “Don’t tell me you’re comfortable. What were you thinking?” Through pained grunts as I unstick my body from the rock, I tell him about the sunlight. He snorts. “I didn’t know you had it in you.” 

“What?” 

No answer. He just shrugs and we make our way back to the camp without too many more words. 

In what is probably a good sign for me, Pan isn’t there when we arrive. Henry is, off to the side with the Lost Boy he fought. Slightly follows my steps when I make my way over and I hold back any protests. Henry jumps when he notices us and sends the boy away. I’m not about to make any assumptions based on his demeanor- I barely know the kid, and Pan is no doubt reserving his most intense psychological games for him. 

“Robin,” he greets me, and adds quieter, “Felix.” 

“What was that about?” I watch the Lost Boy wander off. 

“He was just congratulating me.” Huh? I look back at Henry, and he continues, “on becoming a Lost Boy, I mean.” His gaze keeps flicking between me and Slightly, but Slightly takes the opposite of the hint and grins slow, stepping up and leaning an elbow on my shoulder. 

“That mean you’ll come hunting with us?” 

“Not yet.” Pan interrupts by materializing at Henry’s shoulder, mirroring Slightly’s pose but with his elbow on Henry’s head, given their height difference. They stare at each other for a moment and then break off, prompting Henry to deflate. 

“Henry?” I ask him, herding him behind a tree so we can sit in relative solitude. But I don’t think for a moment that we have any privacy. “Are you alright?” 

Henry sighs. I’m surprised again by how much he seems to pack into his little head. “My family’s here,” he admits. It’s almost too quiet for me to hear. “They said they’re coming to get me, but, I just get the feeling that Pan’s in control of every little thing.” 

I would assume so, myself, but I don’t tell him that. He deserves comfort; I won’t change my mind after a few unsolicited gifts. I won’t even think about the thimble. “Remember what you said, before? When we first got here?” Before. It’s odd, that I can’t really say it, even though Dad’s absence rings incessantly in the space around me whenever I have half a mind to think. Even when I’ve grieved him and grieved who I wanted him to be and grieved Mom and the chance I could have gotten with her and grieved Tamara when she wasn’t Mom and grieved my friends and grieved my life and grieved and grieved and- I wonder if I’ll ever do anything else, suddenly. Pan’s advice for Henry was to forget the things he couldn’t have, and in close proximity to whatever Pan is it seems easy enough. Maybe the trick is he knows it, knows his presence is the only reprieve from the shit he himself is responsible for. 

“I said,” Henry hiccups with shining eyes, “I said they’d come for me.” Yes, he snarked Dad and Tamara, and I did, too; I wouldn’t take that back. But Henry seems to be drowning in guilt. “But-“ 

“Henry.” 

“No, I-“ 

“What changed?” 

“Everything,” he sighs. “Everything’s different, I don’t know. If they manage it, will you come, too?” 

My teeth grind together as I try not to grimace. “I was intending to meet up with my mom outside of prison, but sure, I’ll join her.” My eighteenth birthday is too soon for this. The sheriff and the mayor’s son kidnapped, I’m the only surviving perpetrator, Henry’s been gaslit to hell? When Henry starts arguing that he’d vouch for me, I shut him down. “Henry, I helped them. On purpose. That was my role, I wasn’t just tagging along for the road trip songs, okay?” It feels awful, but I explain. “Even if your mom doesn’t arrest me, I’m headed nowhere fast. I have to stay here for any shot at leading a fulfilling life.” 

“I don’t want to leave without you.” 

I won’t pretend I haven’t been manipulated. Like a marble on a plate, or clouds in a storm system: Pan is the point of lowest pressure, and he’s lifted the plate with his own hands, plucked me out of my general misery to entertain him. The tree we’re hiding behind scrapes my shoulder through the cloak when I start in a direction I can’t see the end of. I don’t know what to say, so I just let my feet go where they will and stop at Pan’s side. 

“I haven’t read much fantasy in my life,” I admit under my breath, “but magic rules are usually more specific than a price, right?” 

“You want to know what I can do and how?” 

Not really. Fire dances in his eyes even though Nibs and the spit he’s always turning are yards away. Fire, and stars. And the cold, stifling vacuum of being spun in Pan’s orbit. “Just tell me what I’m paying for shit I didn’t order,” I say, more than a little breathless. 

Peter Pan turns more fully towards me and tilts his head it what isn’t a nod. Then he steps forward, just off center so our temples knock together when I gasp; when I try to lean back, it’s with resistance from my cloak. My vision tunnels and the air only gets thinner when I dare look at him, so I close my eyes. It’s almost worse. Almost. Blood pounds in my ears loud enough to drown the camp out, but I can hear quiet puffs of air and the creak of every fine hair bent by our heads. An inch to one side and we’d be kissing, an inch forward and we’d be hugging. Or some undoubtably elusive version of such things. Pan moves in neither direction; he turns his head, knocking his jaw against mine until his cold breath draws between the top of my ear and my hairline again. Everything I thought before about him being the one comfort to all his horrors was wrong! Peter Pan is just so fucking overwhelming that it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I haven’t breathed in minutes, I don’t care to think, by the time he chooses to speak again. 

He says, “no.” 

In my mind the storm cloud has already broken, but when I open my eyes, it seems I have, too. There’s barely any sensation coming from my knuckles when I can clearly see myself trading hits with Peter Pan. My body has decided, for me, to break formation and leap from the plate. There’s other information to take in, I’m sure- I’ve only seen Pan breathe without an audience twice- but the glare of each point of contact is more powerful than anything. I don’t even feel it, not really, but seeing it happen is intoxicating. Is this torture? More mind games? It certainly feels like I’m being puppeted. I could very well just be going insane, which wouldn’t be all Pan’s fault. But for hours I rain and he enjoys it. The head rush takes forever to quiet down. 

When I wake, I feel more rested than I probably ever have in my life. I’m flat on my back, warm, my head supported, no biological needs calling for me yet. The ache in my muscles is comforting, in a way. Grounds me to the moment and helps me think of nothing. When I release my hands from the fists they seem stuck in, I find them bruised and cracked; my body and mind feel rejuvenated, but at the same time, I can’t really go lax. Something draws close to my brow, drifts from lash to lash until I turn away. A puff of air crosses my face. 

My first suspicion is a bug. Dad has never woken me up so slowly, preferring to nudge my arm until I shake him off. Most of the time, he just yells from the kitchen- 

A canvas roof greets my eyes. Dad is dead. 

“Fuck,” I hiss to myself, and “shit,” for good measure. My throat swells, my eyes burn, my ears shift with pressure. 

“Did you know,” Bee starts as he marches into the tent. I look around and find where we deposited the twins and Tootles, but no one is around. “Two brothers came to Neverland once, long ago. They sought Dreamshade, and believed it was a medicine. Pan thought it was funny. To prove him wrong, one brother cut himself with a thorn of Dreamshade and collapsed immediately.” Bee sits. “We Lost Boys watched the remaining brother beg Pan for help; it really was hilarious. Captain Hook, crying like a baby. Pan opened Neverland’s spring to him, which ties all who drink to the island, and Hook’s brother lived long enough to sail away and die.” 

“I think I did know,” I mutter, mostly to myself. But time is irrelevant, so I suppose it’s hardly surprising. That I drank water that has tied me to Neverland on pain of death is unsurprising, as well. 

The tent flap swings on a phantom wind. Any hope of gathering my composure disappears with the air, and I’m left crying without a sound, without reserve. Then he appears. “It’s time,” Pan says, and Bee pulls me to my feet. “The Dark One will die and be trapped in his vault, destroying Storybrooke in the process. I’ve looked forward to this since it was prophesized, as it’s so rare that I get to witness time.” An uncertain quip rises in my mind- he can witness time all he wants, where I’m from- but he seems to see it and flashes a grin. Equally unspoken: gutsy and clever, you lost one. If you lose me, nothing will matter. 

“Pan never fails!” Bee cheers, and shoves me forward, stumbling to avoid the figure in front of me at all costs. 

“That’s right,” Pan answers, and lifts one hand into view just to hold his fingertips a breath away from my mouth. He lowers it and pinches the column of my throat, hard. “Let’s go, then.” 

It’s becoming clear that Henry is woefully virtuous. His optimism knows no bounds, even if his mood isn’t always cheery; there’s a quality to him that says he’s seen the darkness life has to offer and chosen to deny it the satisfaction of breaking him. Can’t relate, but, I respect it. He’s still a kid, though. It grates on me but I am, too. Pan, in his ageless boyhood, has long since dug his hands into those qualities of Henry’s and convinced him there’s an evil afoot that pales in comparison to Tamara supposedly killing Knight. Henry would give anything to help resolve it. Pan all but guides my limbs to pose as if we’re the closest of friends. Did Henry see me, in my moment of fury? Somehow I doubt it: Pan has only encouraged a found family between me and Henry. 

As it is, Pan makes to appear caught up in a conversation with me and Latch when Henry storms up to us and says, “I know about your secret, I followed Felix.” 

Pan also makes to appear surprised by this, and subsequently guilty. “I didn’t want-“ 

“Were you ever gonna tell me?” Henry turns to me for support. “The island’s magic is dying, and it’s taking Wendy Darling with it.” 

“It’s not your fault, Henry,” Pan interrupts, before my grimace is too obvious. 

“Wendy said I can help, you- you said I can help, with the heart of the truest believer, right?” 

Almost sounding hesitant, leaving just enough of a breath to send Henry careening for a goal that- by my calculations, at least, which could be equally brainwashed- doesn’t exist, “yes.” 

“Take me to Skull Rock,” Henry says. Neither of them look at me or Latch but I follow and Latch stays behind. 

The island does look like it’s dying as we walk. If I hadn’t just witnessed mind-breaking horrors, if I wasn’t so keenly aware of the moon peeking between those wilted treetops, I might question it. But I don’t, my feet catching as many stones and twigs as they do on every walk through the jungle. My cloak frays on low vegetation that I can’t quite see, but seems starved for attention nonetheless. We walk a messy path through dry undergrowth, sodden dirt and decay below that, until the trees go from upright to just tilted. Skull Rock- named so for good reason, but only just associating itself with a VHS-quality memory- is across only a lagoon, though. We don’t hit any sand approaching the little canoe that will evidently take us to whatever glows in the house-sized boulder standing untouched by the sea’s erosion. As if it were carved, but it couldn’t be, it looks entirely natural and anatomically correct. It looks to be both stone and bone at the same time. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Pan tells Henry lowly even as the canoe drifts unnaturally towards us. And Henry rises to the bait. 

“Yes, I do.” 

We leave the trees behind and the moon glares down at the boat, at Skull Rock when we reach it and it’s even larger than a house. Close to where the ear would be is an opening with stairs, and Henry and I forge ahead with Pan bringing up the rear after a moment. I don’t even try to guess why. 

“Your arrival here was foretold,” Pan murmurs as we climb. “You would have showed up sooner or later. Still, I’m glad you’re here.” 

“What exactly do I need to do?” 

The staircase curves and opens up, flattening to the open skull with stars and the moon faintly daring to crawl through the eye sockets. Seafaring paraphernalia clutters up the space, an overturned table here and a torn sail there. “This is where Neverland’s magic is weakest,” Pan explains. He doesn’t answer Henry’s question, but then begins giving him simple instruction. “Sit here,” he says, and we settle in a circle where the brain might be, knees locked like magnets. 

“I’m scared,” Henry admits, after a heavy few seconds. I grab his hand; whatever Pan’s making him do, I can’t let him endure it alone, and Pan has allowed me such a role. I’ll take full advantage of it. “Thank you, Robin,” he whispers. 

“Close your eyes,” Pan instructs, reaching for Henry’s other hand. And mine, useless as the idea seems to me. He guides Henry’s to the boy’s own shoulder, then down, pressing over his ribs. “Can you feel it? Your heart?” 

My own eyes have begun to drift shut when footsteps scratch and echo around the room, and then a voice, “stop.” 

Henry flinches. Pan lets go of his hand, but not entirely, as if willing to let them talk but only for a moment. They both twist to face Mr. Gold: like Pan, he has no shadow. It’s only obvious because of Skull Rock’s eerie untraceable light source. Weak magic, my ass. “Mr. Gold, I-“ 

“I know, laddie,” Mr. Gold tells Henry, “you just want to help. You’re a good kid.” His grimace is sour, his hair thin, his posture uneven, but he reaches out placatingly to the three of us. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” 

“I’m the only one who can do this.” 

“It’s his choice,” Pan shrugs, though his arms are spread to hold both our hands. Mr. Gold looks at him and something in his presence reminds me of the moment he tore Tamara’s heart out and crushed it in his hand. Or her lung, or whatever it was. Given the heart talk, I’m inclined to believe the former… 

What can be broken, touched, snared, lost? What can go through all manners of torture and, like Henry, swell again with love? It feels silly to think of the riddles in the middle of what is surely a battle between powerful magic users. But I do it anyways; putting all the answers together, each piece of this exact setting that Pan has been spelling out since I met him and probably for centuries and no time at all beforehand, still provides nothing but the small victory of sorting out a puzzle. I can’t help. I squeeze Henry’s hand a bit tighter. “Your heart,” I say, dumb. He nods. 

“Stop,” Mr. Gold says again, “Henry, this is between me and him. Whatever he’s told you, it’s a trick. I simply owe a debt.” 

“A life debt, that Wendy is supposed to pay.” The tale twists further, whatever it is. “Henry, it’s up to you.” 

“I can’t let that happen.” Mr. Gold decides to demonstrate by conjuring a small brown and red item in his hand, and he waves his other hand over it, but nothing happens. I assume that something is supposed to happen. 

“Pandora’s Box,” Pan names the item. “It can trap anything one wants it to, forever. Or it could, if it were real. See, I have to real one,” he says, and laughs a little. His hands linger but he approaches Mr. Gold with an identical conjured item of his own. In his absence, I’m unmoored, but in the way that I usually am when he’s near, which is all the more disorienting. “I’m hurt that you’d do such a thing, Rumple, I really am, so I won’t hurt you by trying the same.” Both boxes disappear. 

“I can do it,” Henry insists, standing as well and pulling me along. He reaches up again to his ribcage, where his heart must be. I wrench it away without thinking and he gasps, “Robin, I can do it-“ 

“Why, Henry?” I snap. My thoughts are almost as much of a fog as when I fought Pan. Why give up his actual heart? To prove he has one? Pan’s game is above him, and I don’t think he has to die for things to play out. “You said your moms are here, you said you heard your dad, you see Mr. Gold; why should everything rest on your shoulders?” He shouldn’t be here at all. 

“If I can do it, I should, Robin, it would be selfish not to.” 

“It would be selfish to make yourself a hero and a martyr.” 

The room darkens. More footsteps rush up the stairs, eventually revealing the sheriff and the mayor. But Henry seems unconvinced, or even annoyed, by my words, and drives his hand impossibly into his own torso in front of everyone. What he reveals is nothing like the thing Tamara died looking at. It’s a small sun, golden and gleaming, reflecting Skull Rock’s light and overpowering it. I’d be hard pressed to call it a heart. The new arrivals shout in alarm, scrambling forwards only to be stopped by something I don’t care to inspect. All I watch is Henry, and then Pan when he steps up beside me and holds out his hand. All of a sudden I stand on my own two feet again and an inkling of dread plants itself in the back of my mind. Henry surrenders the light. 

“What’ll it be, then, Rumple? His or yours?” Pan asks as Henry begins to wheeze. In a flash, though, wind bursts through the room and Mr. Gold is on Pan, capturing him from behind. 

“Yours,” Mr. Gold snarls, and in the inertia of his attack drives some dagger I just barely see into Pan’s chest. Between his ribs. Through, to his own heart, if the choked-off gasp is anything to go off. “Take-“ he breathes heavily, his final words directed behind him- “take my shadow.” When they collapse, I don’t move. The tangle of corpses by my feet seems hardly real, like the heart still in Pan’s lax grip. The mayor picks the latter up with care and surprising speed to return it. I feel like I know something I shouldn’t, watching Mr. Gold’s body turn to mist. Like Pan allowed his mouth to run the way Bee allows his. After only a moment of hugging and apologizing do the moms turn to me. 

“Gold’s shadow will get us back to Storybrooke,” Sheriff Swan tells me in the same light tone she used when we first met. I nod. 

“I’m fine,” Henry is scowling, brushing his mothers off. “You don’t know that this’ll solve anything.” 

“Honey, he was keeping the island captive. Without him, we can bring everyone to safety,” The mayor argues. The sheriff watches me closely for a few lingering moments. 

She has questions, obviously. I expected that much. Actually, I expected more, but she probably imagines me a grieving daughter more than an accomplice. Even if I did assist with her son’s kidnapping, she treats me the same as when Dad was in the hospital. But the facts catch up when the moment is over. “Gold said they didn’t know who they were working for.” 

“It’s not that simple,” I grimace. Henry will be able to warn them all of the Home Office once they return to Storybrooke. Or whatever remains. The idea of going with them rings through me like a tuning fork to my bones, chilling me; I very well can go, and finish high school in a group home, and find Mom in a few more years. My feet don’t move, however, and that pit of dread tells me I’ve already agreed to something else entirely. 

Neither mother suspects it, or if they do, they don’t say, and Henry says, “what about the Lost Boys?” 

“I’ve been in the system,” the sheriff admits suddenly. “I’ll make sure it’s a smooth ride for them.” With nothing keeping us in Skull Rock, they turn to go, giving me odd looks when I drag Pan’s body with an old hammock crusted with dead algae and left draped across an empty chest. His literal dead weight is almost too heavy to roll into the hammock, and I cringe each time he thumps down another step towards the boat, but I can’t leave him behind. It works. 

I don’t dare look at him as we make our way through the jungle back to camp. Given the beating my feet take on the journey, I don’t want to think about Pan. Carrying his extra weight makes my heels dig further into the mud and definitely gets me a cut or two on rocks that would have done nothing but pinch, before. Nobody helps me; I’m almost glad, I think, it’s better this way. When we arrive in sight of all the Lost Boys tied up and guarded by four adults I don’t know and Knight, however, the mayor uses magic to lift Pan’s body in the air and gloat. 

“What is it you kids like to say?” She waves her hand and grins. “Pan never fails?” Slightly shouts, getting to his feet with a fierce snarl, but he’s quickly shoved back down. The mayor only preens. “Yes, I think that’s it.” 

“Henry,” I murmur, “you should go.” But he glares at me. I remember what he said- that he doesn’t want to leave without me- but the beauty of the idea is intangible. 

“The shadow will fade soon,” the sheriff tells the other adults and Knight after explaining what happened. Knight brings Henry into a tight hug and they both seem to blink away tears after. “We need to go, and quickly.” Meanwhile, the mayor has grown tired of playing with Pan’s body. Slightly begs something with his eyes that I can’t decipher, but I get the sense that we’re on the same page, anyways. I’ll need a weapon: Henry created a sword from a stick, but somehow I doubt the same will happen for me, so I look around at Henry’s family for opportunity. Slightly jerks until I look back at him and follow his own emphatic glare to a man holding a hook. The same man who went with Dad and Tamara into the mines. Captain Hook, I assume, to whom the clutter in Skull Rock likely belonged. Beyond the hook, he’s littered with small shiny things that I can sort through mentally as I try to edge my way towards him without seeming too focused. His face becomes familiar as I get nearer. 

“You’re the younger brother,” I say, quiet enough that no other conversations are interrupted but loud enough for him to face me head on. 

Under the new beard, and the new lines set in his face, and under the wind-burn on his cheekbones and the scrutiny in his eyes, he is undeniably the younger brother. “What did you just say?” He asks me, reaching for one of his weapons himself as I pick the one I’ll take. But the question asks itself. 

“What happened? With the king?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Did he win his war?” I edge closer. “He didn’t get any nightshade, I assume.” Horror fills his expression. 

“Who told you of this?” 

The next words chill me. “Neverland is a place where time stands still.” Spoken with Slightly’s intonation, it catches me off guard, Pan’s voice echoing in my mind, but the chance is there and I can’t pass it up. Hook only flinches when I take the first knife, so I take another and leap away, out of range when he lunges with his namesake. My feet burn but I get the knife to Slightly, then run as fast as my body will allow past the other Lost Boys and back to Pan. They turn so I can cut them free as I go, and the last in line is Tootles. She takes the knife when I hand it to her. The Lost Boys won’t surrender, not twice. And it seems the magicians are out of juice or surprised enough to freeze. Maybe Pan- limp and definitely dead as he looks- is doing something. I don’t know two things about fairytales and this whole experience has only disproved whatever I thought I did know, but surely Peter Pan can’t die. And in Neverland, too? No. 

“Robin?” Henry yelps, dragged away by one of the people I don’t know. “Robin, come with us!” 

But I don’t move. Of all the ways this could end, I guess. The Lost Boys seem to be conjuring magic of their own, forcing the group back, away from the camp, and as soon as the sheriff is past the mermaids she releases Mr. Gold’s shadow so it can possess the sail of their pirate ship. The Lost Boys whoop and holler, sending magic over water that I swear wasn’t so close to camp before. They don’t have the time but Henry takes it anyways, sticking his hand out from the side of the ship as if to reach for me. I see it in the returned moonlight, small and frail and dirty. 

I slump over in the dirt. Pan doesn’t so much as twitch, let alone breathe, even after Henry’s family is gone. Wondering if I put my proverbial eggs on the wrong basket altogether leads me to wonder about that school receptionist. Will she hear that I’ve died? Will we be marked missing, Dad and I, or is this usual enough behavior for him that Mom will have to investigate on her own once she’s out? 

One question, though, I hope I can get an answer for. “Slightly,” I call, as he’s perched at the edge of the impromptu celebration. He crouches over Pan a moment before regarding me. “What happened to the Home Office?” 

Predictably, his smirk sharpens. He brushes some firelit honey hair from Pan’s cheek. 

[brimbrimbrimbrim]

Would Wrench be into Somnophilia? Not as in he gets dirty with LowRes but as in LowRes decides to wake him with a surprise. They have certain codes to give each other like, is Wrench sleeping in the blue boxers? He game! Paint out this dirty scene once more for me, dear!

Dude, as long as he isn’t making LowRes uncomfortable, you know Wrench is down for most anything. Somnophilia with a great little consent factor to make it always awesome and never shady? - fuck yeah. You know he’s game.

Dirty scene painting as follows…

After the many months with Wrench and the several you’d spent sleeping with him in some form or another, especially now that the hackerspace in the Valley was a ‘three times a week’ venture, sometimes more, Wrench has brainstormed a code of sorts.

He devised it after he’d come to bed shit faced and horny after staying up late with B3ta, Ant_Man, and Snickerdoodle (the curvy new chick that maybe had a massive crush on Sitara, of which you were maybe sworn to keep secret). That night you’d been on the brink of sleep, only slightly aware that’d he’d crawled into bed beside you before his fingers were spreading down the flare of your hip, taking the edge of your black underwear with the cuff of his spiked bracelet. Wrench had gotten your panties halfway down your thighs before you’d fully woken up, gasping awake with mask spikes in the back of your head and his hands groping your bare cunt with drunken precision.

“… pretty presumptuous of you,” you’d moaned, half wiggling in pleasant surprise and mock annoyance. He got a heel kicked in his shin - all accidental - and, because he was a wobbly drunk at best, fell off the bed with a ‘whooshing’ screech.

You’d laughed, rolled over and watched with sleepy eyes as he clawed at the mattress like he was Frodo climbing the perilous rock walls of Mt. Doom. Despite the at symbols circling his mask, he was half-sober and slurring together apologies by the time he’d gathered himself.

“Wrench, chill… slow down,” you hadn’t planned on making deals with him that night, but sometimes drunk Wrench came up with simple solutions to potential problems and always made you laugh while doing so. Even trying to articulate yourself through a sleep-fuzz head while Wrench tried to pronounce common words with possible blood-alcohol poisoning, you’d decided it was fair game to wake you up with a surprise if, and only if, you went to bed sans underwear.

Wrench had agreed readily, sliding the mask over his forehead; bangs moving out his eyes and smirked with half-lidded eyes. You watched him heel off his converses, tugging his black socks off and exclaim loud enough for the whole house to hear, “No panties for yooooo! - and no socks for meeee!”

“Wow,” you’d deadpanned, hearing a loud giggle filter through the walls, but decided that ‘no panties and no socks’ rule could work.

He went to sleep naked far too often to make his rule be the no boxers thing, and you were pretty sure he only owned red boxers… silly, sexy things with the red stars that literally made your tongue wet just looking at them, so your idea of blue striped boxers or something of the equivalent was quickly shot down.

So, everything got hashed out that night and despite Wrench being too drunk to do more than grope and fumble, you’d had a nice sleepy orgasm and got to nuzzle up to a warm, touchy-feely Wrench which was never not amazing.

After your conversation that night there hasn’t been a single moment where Wrench has gone to sleep with his socks on… although this particular morning is the only one where you’ve both been back in your room at the house in the Valley for nearly a week.

Usually, Wrench wakes up before you, or he’s hungover, and you take pity on him and let him sleep it off, but last night you both ended up getting dragged around the city on a breadcrumb trail of illegal shenanigans that ended up in a clusterfuck of a car chase. Marcus and T-Bone had been hugging the dash and steering wheel respectively, speeding down Oakland before the four of you ended up in a ravine with a blown engine and Son’s of Ragnarok initiates staring at you from the storm tunnels.

Needless to say, by the time you’d both escaped the fire, stole a bike outside one the Son’s-owned bars, thinking nothing of the potential death warrants that’d follow if you’d been caught, you and Wrench both sped to your room in Silicon Valley and collapsed dead on the mattress. The sheets on your naked skin say you’d have enough energy to throw off your sweaty, smoke-laced clothes but the memory of disrobing is lost for all eternity.

Snickerdoodle is an early riser, and through the thick walls, you can hear her grinding coffee beans in the kitchen. The gentle hum almost brings the smell of blue mountain grounds to your nose - almost makes you wanna get up, but you’ll make a cup later… it’s too early for coffee just yet, especially after the evening you’ve had.

Your phone reads a little after five, which means you’ve only been asleep for three hours, but while you’re tired, it’s impossible to switch off now that you’re awake. All the sirens, blasting in your ears and blinding you from the back seat of that sports car, were replaying in your head on a noisy loop. The phantom gunshots were particularly unnerving…

The darkness of your’s and Wrench’s room makes the perfect backdrop for recent memories.

Stale adrenaline becomes new adrenaline as your mind rewinds the evening, adding deleted scenes of mayhem and alternate endings of grizzly outcomes. It was just as wild and terrifying as that night you’d first hooked up with Wrench. The car chase, the cops firing off their pistols and you in shock as the evening unfurled. No one got hurt last night, except Ray… who claimed Wrench tripped him on their short foot chase outside Son’s territory… and honestly, that was possible given the way those two had been fighting lately.

Feeling sweaty and raw - old panic resurfacing - you roll over, feeling Wrench’s arm draped on your waist slip and hang down against the small of your back. He snores quietly, shuffles closer - hooked nose on the back of your neck - and sinks deeper into sleep.

You open your eyes to the dark wall in front of you; covered in selfies and stickers and random poster-crap. It’s dark in here, despite the lava lamp globbing endlessness, but you can still, only slightly, make out the picture Wrench took of the two of you at the pier - that day you’d both snuck up on the crab house roof and snapped those bowtie cock rings at people.

Despite the fire in your stomach, you smile and thumb the picture, focusing on the light pressure of Wrench’s knuckle against your spine.

Under the sheets, you’re restless, squirming until your heels brush Wrench’s shins and skim down… toes curled, and the sudden idea of hot, sticky sex leaves you so hopeful that the bare skin you find on Wrench’s foot makes you sigh.

Fuck.

Thank fuck, you think, carefully twisting back around until Wrench’s nose wiggles at the tickle of your hair sliding against his face. He mouths the pillow cover in his sleep and moans. A little patch of drool-damp pillow makes your bite your tongue to keep from giggling like a fucking moron. He’s too cute sometimes.

Too cute and it’s times like this that he actually looks innocent.

Oh, shit… you smirk, focusing on the way his naked chest catches the soft orange glow from the lava lamp and not how close you’d both come to getting your heads blown off. Wrench is alive, and so are you, and thinking any more about what could have been would only ruin what was - and what was, was fine and dandy. He was also about to get woken up with a mouth hug.

Dude had no idea…

It’s obvious he’s been eager to get ‘woken’ up with your first curled around his dick if the lack of socks since last week has been any indication, but you’ve got a better idea. What guy wouldn’t enjoy waking up with wet, warm lips around their cock? Blowjob for the win, you think, licking your the lower plush of your mouth at the peaceful expression of content, ignorant-looking Wrench.

Carefully, even though you’re sure you could twist his nipples and he’d remain as unconscious as a Snorlax, you lift the edge of the sheets and shimmy your way underneath. His skin is hotter the further down you get until the heat bakes off his stomach and against your lips, his hip burns softly.

You sigh, inhaling the warm musk of smoke mixed with stale old spice off his skin before tasting the leftovers of salty sweat from last night.

Wrench tastes like the crimes you’d committed last night; car theft and police chases and something sweet too, much like the tenderness he’d shown in between it all. The little things… like shoving you behind him when the guns came out or running his hands down your body when the car smashed into the concrete ravine, checking for anything broken or bruised.

Excited about indulging him, you kiss Wrench’s warm pelvis, rest a palm on his stomach and open your mouth up over the semi-stiff length of his cock. Under your fingers, his abdomen twitches at the hot leak of your breath on his dick. As your lips close and suckle around the tip of his cock - tongue working the mental until it’s slippery and sliding back and forth through his puffy skin - Wrench makes the thinnest wheeze of breath you’ve ever heard.

Above the sheets, you can hear Wrench swallow and grunt as you work him over; slow and moist. His right leg kicks out, and with a heavy exhale he shifts over on his back; deflating. The muscles under the hot skin of his stomach bounce as you draw him in deeper and tongue the stiffening root under his cock, bringing him to full hardness. With every gentle suck and flick of your tongue - flat and firm - Wrench starts to wake up.

“… fuck, what-“ he groans; sleep clogged and shaky, “Ohhh… oh, shit…”

The sound of his voice makes you moan around him, easing another hand over his hip to keep him steady as he jolts with realization. Once his brain catches up to his cock, he sinks back into the bed with a lengthy, indulgent groan.

Imagining what his face must look like, makes moisture flood between your thighs. A pleasant little itch starts to grow until you squeeze them together sharply, moan around his cock and plant your elbows at his sides, fitting yourself between his open legs. As you bob your head up and down, feeling the silky slide and salty taste of him on your tongue and inner cheeks, you decide that Wrench doesn’t get enough blowjobs. He deserves all of them, every morning and every evening for being so amazing and loving and - ignoring the life or death situations he brings with him - a safe rock to cling to when you need it.

“… shiiiiiit - yes, this is like… fuck me,” he mumbles, arching his hips up until you open your throat, feeling the bulb of his dick piercing down the back of your tongue.

“So, amazzzzing….”

Wrench starts to pant and whispers your name like you’re… well… like you’re giving him legendary head. He threads his fingers in your tangled hair and spreads his thighs until your elbows are dragged off the bed; forearms resting hotly on his sides. His chest rises and falls; breathing ragged and muscles twitching happily. Every little whimper and moan you get above the covers fills your chest with a different warmth. You love this anarchist way too much sometimes and just hearing the effects of your mouth on his cock is enough to make you go full on heart eyes.

“Are we- is this…” Wrench’s breath hitches and his fingers in your hair clench as you slide back and forth, slurping up sloppy trails of spit and start lashing your tongue over his leaking cockhead, “fucking fucking-fuck!”

“Gonna cum,” he gasps; fingers tight and stomach tense.

You engulf his cock again, working the base with a fist and suck the first squirt of cum right out of him. The concentrated taste of semen stains your tastebuds, and with a moan meant just for him, you pull back until the tip of his cock pulses in your mouth and jerk him off on your tongue.

“Uuuuuuuh…,” Wrench nearly gurgles as he finishes, belly rolling and clenching under your hand. The thick meat of his cock pulses out a few last jets of salty jizz.

When he’s on the comedown, Wrench laughs; breathless and hazy and well-fucked. It’s infectious, and as his dick slips from your lips and you swallow the tang of cum, you giggle against his hip until he slides up on an elbow and drags you up his naked body. The air outside the sheets is freezing compared to the heat underneath, and with a grumble, you dive back down and take him with you.

Both of you end up under the covers, warm and fumbling like teenagers; kissing and squeezing and whispering sweet nothings. The warm cocoon of bleary affections is just what you both needed after that evening. All those tense worries you’d had when you first woke up are dashed away with each happy smack of his lips on yours.

“Conspiracy theory time,” Wrench says after kissing you so hard you can’t even taste his cum anymore - as if he’d licked it all out of you, “You’re a synth. Ya know? - one of those skinjobs Decker shoots in the face for a living, cause no way could someone like you be real.”

For the first time since last night, you speak, lips still pressed against his own, “… if anyone’s the robot it’s you. Fucking punk robot… although that doesn’t explain all the cum.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Fembots don’t get as slippery as you do,“ Wrench says it with a wink even though you can’t see it to be sure, “Besides, no one would build one with a face like mine.”

Wrench tugs your close by the heft of your ass and grins before you can tell him to shut the fuck up, giving it his best Schwarzenegger voice and says, “It’s all about dem musclezzzz! - or dem boooobies.”

“Uh’huh, so is it just the tits that do it for guys like you,” you ask, joking as you pet his bed hair down on the back of his scalp. The soft weight of the sheets drapes over your bodies and heads as Wrench pokes your cheek with his nose.

“Tits and ass,” Wrench agrees, pinching your butt cheek and pecks your lips once, twice and then you’re back to melting and licking his tongue until he starts trailing hot, slick kisses down your neck and chest and further still past your stomach until he’s swallowing up the delicate folds of aroused flesh between your legs, making sure - double sure - you’re not actually a robot by making you come undone on his tongue over and over again.

Maybe if you’re extra careful next time, you can get him on the verge of cumming before he wakes up… or, perhaps you can get him off while he sleeps.

That - that would be an interesting…

"Fuck…” you moan.

… experiment.

You can read it again (all 2.5k) on AO3 HERE. You can, if you want, tip your writer HERE.

[lost-your-memory]

here's a prompt I'd love to see you write! Kara is sent as a reporter to "investigate" Earth-2, and while there she meets her doppelganger and the two really hit it off, going from an interview to drinks to a night spent together. Afterwards Kara tells this whole experience to Cat. Doesn't have to be angsty :)

It was an interesting prompt and I cheated a little to be able to stay coherent with the whole universe but I hope it suits you anyway ! 

“New topic Danvers, you’re going to Earth 2 and I want a five pages article about the difference between our world and the second one.”Snapper is even grumpier than ever and Kara simply nods. She thinks that sometimes, her new boss standards are even higher than the ones Miss Grant used to set. He’s not even looking at her, walking around his bullpen and moving post-its around on his board, purposely ignoring her as she tags along, waiting for the rest of the instructions she knows he’s going to bark at some point.“5 points, top. I want politics analysis, demographic statistics, ecological report and a general cultural background, that you can measure to our world with relevant data.”His voice is raw and raspy and he’s walking even faster. She takes mental notes of everything and then she frowns, slightly.“And the last point?”She thinks she sees the shadows of a smirk on the man’s lips but it’s gone as fast as it appeared and he finally looks at her, an incredulous sparkle shining in his narrowed eyes.“Do keep up, Danvers. I want to know if Earth two has a Supergirl or some kind of superhero to protect National City. If you can find out more information about others like her in the world, that’s even better but if you can’t, focus on National City.”With that, he’s stepping into the elevator and pulling his glasses down on his nose to look at a bunch of papers he’s just picked up. The doors close on him and she sighs.Her phone chimes to let her know she has a text and she pulls it out. It’s from the man who just left and she groans.Snapper : I want it for yesterday, Danvers.

—She uses Cisco’s device to travel to Earth 2, after a short visit to the first one to have a movie night with the Allen-West & Co little makeshift family.She lands in a place she immediately remembers.It’s the deserted alley behind Noonan’s and it’s a few minutes away from the CatCo Plaza. She likes the familiarity of it, the strong scent of coffee swirling in the air, mixed with the fresh dough of cinnamon rolls and the unique smell of boiled milk. She smiles and takes a deep, deep breath before adjusting her outfit and pulling her glasses higher up on her nose.She’s here as Kara Danvers, reporter for the CatCo magazine and she really hopes that for once, she won’t have to be Supergirl.—As it turns out, Earth two doesn’t have a Supergirl.She’s at Noonan’s to jostle a few points on her notepad so she can have a clear line of what she needs to do and all the information she has to gather when the images on the muted TV above the counter captures her attention.Her jaw all but drops and she stares, dumbfounded, at the face of her sister, displayed on the screen with a bright caption underneath.National City’s champion engaged in a deadly combat with the Last Child of Daxam.She almost chokes on her coffee when she sees the face of Alex’s lookalike opponent. She could have guessed from the title on the caption but it still takes her by surprise and she notices the differences. He’s smaller, larger and his eyes are as black as a moonless night.She’s at loss as to what to do, feeling terrified for that woman who looks exactly like Alex but who isn’t her sister but soon enough, the fight is over and the Daxamite is being dragged by a team of men in black. She squints, hoping to identify them as DEO but they’re gone too fast for her to make out anything helpful.The camera focuses on the woman who saved the city and zooms, capturing a smile and a pair of soulful, shining eyes as she effortlessly hovers a couple of inches above the ground. She’s flying but there’s no cape billowing behind her and the black of her suit is sparkling under the flashing lights. It looks like it’s made of some kind of flexible metal that follows every single one of her movements and there’s no crest on her chest, no visible sign of any kind.She tilts her head to the side in a gesture that is all too familiar to Kara and then, up, up, up and away she flies.The woman doesn’t seem to have a superhero identity and the news only refers to her as National City’s champion.It’s odd and strange but then again, it’s a whole new world, Kara thinks.—She goes from strange discovery to heart-wrenching tragedy, in this strange universe she’s supposed to investigate.CatCo exists but it’s not a media empire, it’s a production company that produces movies, TV shows and some very prestigious documentaries. Kara finds out that it’s even bigger than the Walt Disney company, in her world and she’s stunned when she learns it’s been created by one talented Cat Grant, art prodigy and business genius.She’s thrown off by the unsettling familiarity of all those differences.She derives from her official researches to dig a little more and she finds out Lucy Lane is a well-known reporter in Metropolis and about to marry President’s daughter. She smiles at that but then her heart weeps a little when she scrolls down on Lucy’s biography. It says Lois Lane died in a shooting but there are no details. No title for Lois, no explanation surrounding her death and Kara digs around a little.She discovers Lois Lane was the leader of a rebellious, terrorist group that tried to have the president Luthor assassinated. She resisted when the army went to take her down and they had to shoot her.It makes her heart bleed a little and she weeps even more when she learns that Lois’s fiancé, Clark Kent, is still purging his sentence in Metropolis’s prison.Apparently, Barry wasn’t kidding when he told her Earth 2 was the one with the bad doppelgangers.—She stumbles upon a robbery in National City main avenue, as she exits the public library, and she realizes how much Barry’s words were true.She’s walking in a small crowd when she hears the gunshots and she has to force herself to act like a civilian instead of listening to her instincts. She runs to go hide herself behind a car and only then she risks a glance towards the stage of the action.She stares in bewilderment, thinking the universe, in every earth that exist, has a funny sense of humor.The doppelgangers of Winn and James are here, shooting in the air to clear a path towards the fancy shops full of jewelry and pretty, rich things. They are carrying fancy technological weapons but they use the common one to shoot and scare people away.The police’s sirens howl in the distance and there’s a familiar windy sound, followed by the crack of a superforce hitting the ground. National City’s champion is here, tall and strong and Kara is blown away by this woman who looks so much like her sister, back on Earth 38.The combat is weird and unfair as evil Winn and James are using ice and fire against the city’s hero and Kara realizes that National City’s champion doesn’t have heat vision or icing breath.In the end, the evil robbers drives away and Alex’s lookalike takes off into the night, leaving the police to deal with the mess.Kara’s left staring at the street and the words are out of her mouth before she can even think them.“You have got to be kidding me.”—She sees herself.She stares at this Earth 2 version of Kara Danvers, climbing out of a police car, all geared up like a cop and dangling a messing ponytail around as she barks orders and directives.It doesn’t stop just there because now she’s picking up on a familiar voice, rich and deep and with some well hidden accents of Spanish and soon enough, there’s a version of Maggie Sawyer following her Earth-2 version of herself.Her head spins and her mind goes blank for a few seconds, because it’s too much to take in.—“Whow. You look just like my partner here. It’s … kind of creepy actually.”She lets out a dry chuckle at Maggie’s words.There’s one thing she never realized about crime scenes, it’s the protocol and procedures the cops have to follow through. As Supergirl, she’s used to leaving before the dust of the fight has even settled but now that she’s trying to act like a normal civilian, she has to give a statement and to wait for a cop to let her go.It’s embarrassing. She didn’t think this thing through and now, she sees the Earth-2 version of herself approaching from behind Maggie, who is still staring at her with awe and wonder in her dark, chocolate eyes.“Hi. Are you done with …”She meets deep, deep blue eyes and the world stops for a while.She’s looked at herself in a mirror before but this, this is beyond words and she couldn’t even try to describe the mixed feelings that makes her whole body vibrate and tingle.It’s unnerving and fascinating at the same time, to see a perfect reflection of herself have a personality, an attitude and emotions that are not hers.They stare at each other for what seems like a whole eternity but then, Maggie’s voice comes between them.“Hi, Kar’. Miss Teschmacher here was just giving me her statement but to be honest, I was just too struck by how much she looks like you. It’s scary, really.”Kara tries not to wince at the familiarity between the two cops. It’s already so weird to look at her clone, she doesn’t need to know what is happening between Earth-2 Kara and Earth-2 Maggie.“It’s … fascinating.”Kara almost gasps because even her clone’s inflections are the same as hers. It’s deep but a little sweet and even though it lacks her usual sunny disposition, she can imagine that being called on a crime scene can erode the optimism, on the long term.“Uh, yes, kind of, I guess” She stutters a little because really, that whole situation feels entirely surreal and she hopes she can escape it right away.“Alright, Miss Teschmacher, you’re free to go. We have your number if we need more information.” Maggie says before turning on her heels to go talk to a rookie.Kara let out a relieved sigh and wanders away.—She jumps when her phone, her Earth-38 phone rings.It’s a reflex, something she’s acquired along all those years working for Cat Grant, she picks up.The voice at the other end of the line is hers and for a whole minute, she can’t reply. Her clone asks, almost shyly, if they can meet for a drink and Kara doesn’t even know what that means but she’s curious and a little dizzy too, so she says yes.—It goes incredibly smoothly.She meets her other self in a bar and after a brief moment of panic when she recognizes Hank Henshaw as the bartender, she sits in one side of a booth. Sat across the polished table, facing her, is that improbable version of herself with deep, deep blue eyes and a smile brighter than the sun itself.She’s wearing a pair of ripped off jeans and a worn-out light Grey sweater with the faded black and bold NYPD letters plastered on her chest and she notices, for the first time, that her clone doesn’t wear glasses.That’s why the blue is so deep and bright and free, in her sparkling eyes. It’s like watching the sun shines over an ever clear ocean.“I know it’s unusual and maybe not very professional but I wanted to see you again. I’m … drawn to you in a way I can’t even explain.”Kara opens her mouth but there’re no words coming out of it and she just looks at her clone. She’s scanning that face that is exactly like hers, up to the scar above her eyes and the very slight curl around her lips. It’s deranging and yet fascinating.“That’s … That’s okay. I’m actually curious. I’ve never … I mean, I can’t believe I’ve never seen you before. You’re … me.” It’s an incoherent ramble but the local version of Kara Danvers doesn’t seem to mind. She smiles and waves a waitress to order a bourbon.She shakes her head and simply asks for a club soda, not wanting to drink, not when the whole world is already spinning on itself and she’s feeling so dizzy, so unsteady.Earth-2 Kara arches a brow but doesn’t push it.—Three hours later, she’s drunk and laughing openly with the woman everyone else assumes is her twin sister.Three times, people came to ask if they were sisters, awe and wonder clear on their face.It turns out, she doesn’t have her high tolerance to alcohol here.She knows she has all her other powers, she tested her hearing and supervision when she’s taken off her glasses under the pretext of cleaning them, but she’s vulnerable to the effect of alcohol.That’s how she ended up drinking sweet, sugary cocktails while her clone self lined up the double Bourbon.It’s easy and it shouldn’t be, to talk to that version of herself she ignores everything about.—It’s one AM and she’s drunk, she’s drunk and she’s naked in a bed she doesn’t know.The body atop of herself however, is familiar in a way she can’t fully explain. It’s herself but it’s not her and she’s spinning in lust, want and desire. There’s a pang of guilt tugging at her heart but it goes away when fingers dig in her flesh and caresses her center.—She jolts awake, sweat drenching her whole body, eyes wide and breathing shallow, ragged.There’s a good number of eyes on her and she looks around in a frantic, desperate way to chase away the reminiscence of something she can’t even begin to think about.She’s at the DEO, safely tucked under the sun bed. It was all a dream, nothing was real. Nothing happened.She passes out under the weight of her relief.—“You’re telling me that, when you were in your weird coma, you just dreamed of another earth, one where you … slept with your doppelganger?”Cat’s voice sounds both incredulous and amused. Kara winces and hides her face under a pillow, groaning from underneath it. It’s not funny and she stills feels a little nauseous about the whole experience, even knowing nothing was real, that it was all the fruit of her coma-imagination.“It’s not funny.” She groans and she smiles against the sheet when she feels Cat’s hand strokes the muscles of her back.It’s been five days since she woke up but she’s still a little weak and vulnerable and she needs a daily dose of sun-powered rest.Cat’s been there the whole time, making a scene in the DEO lobby when agents tried to take her away.It was Alex, who pleaded her cause to Hank and the martian finally, finally caved and let Cat stay. Of course, the CEO of one of the most powerful media empire of the world had to sign a ridiculous amount of papers and confidentiality agreements but she did it without a fuss.Now, they were back at Cat’s place and Kara finally had brought herself to tell the whole dream to the other woman.Who was clearly struggling to get her mind around the story here.“You slept with yourself, Alex was some kind of Supergirl, Winn and James were Bonnie and Clyde, Maggie was your partner because right, you were a cop and I was … a female Walt Disney?” The last words are sharp and disdainful and it makes Kara laugh.“Yes, a very loved one if I remember correctly.” She does, remember. Everything. It haunts her nights and sometimes even her days too.“Ugh. Lionel Luthor was president, greater Lane was the actual Lois and about to marry Lena Luthor when your cousin was in prison for having tried to kill the president and Lois …” Cat trails off and there’s something strangled in her voice when she pronounces that name. She doesn’t say it out loud often, Kara remembers. It’s loaded, it’s a wound that didn’t heal correctly.“Can you please stop talking about this? I dread the day I will have to tell Alex about it… I will never, never hear the end of it.” She groans again and the sound of Cat’s laugh fills the room. It helps, that Cat is taking it with humor. Mostly.“Alright, Darling.”Kara pokes her head out of under the pillow and throws a suspicious look at Cat Grant, who is not famous for giving up when asked.“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not done with that chapter but for now … I would rather focus on something else.” Cat says and her voice is low and husky, lined with desire as her hand wanders across Kara’s skin.Kara smiles and shuffles closer to Cat to ask for a kiss. She’s a breath away from her lover’s mouth when she hears the question.“Wait, did you sister really kill that daxamite man-child you’re calling a friend?”Kara groans and makes her shut up with a deep, messy and hungry kiss.

[everythingsouthdakota]

Thank you to Lyra Radford for letting me re-post her article. Visit Lyra’s website at www.unsettlingthings.com

Rich with history and littered with lore, ghost stories from South Dakota have risen from the oral traditions of the Lakota Sioux Indians who have inhabited much of the land for centuries. The majority of South Dakota urban legends evolved from weird Native American creatures and stories. Historic landmarks, ancient burial mounds, and otherworldly forests pepper the state’s terrain.

Much like urban myths from Arizona and various other states, South Dakota’s lore and horrors includes fabled beasts, real-life murders, evil entities on the hunt for souls, and more ghosts than one could ever possibly catalog. There’s even an urban legend about the infamous Jesse James jumping over an ridiculously wide ravine while evading capture. From the impossible to the spine chilling, this list explores some of the myths and ghost stories that make up creepy South Dakota.

The Gitchi Manitou Murders

The Gitchie Manitou is a nature preserve just southeast of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in the northwestern corner of Iowa that many believe is haunted. It has ancient Native American burial mounds, has witnessed the murders of four teens, and has been the site of the rape of an adolescent.

In November of 1973, five teens from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, went out camping in Gitchie Manitou. The unsuspecting group was sitting by a fire with some marijuana when suddenly, a shotgun went off. Roger Essem, 17, was killed instantly by brothers Allen, David, and James Fryer, who descended on the group, pretending to be cops. They separated the remaining three boys from the only girl, 13-year-old Sandra Cheskey, and placed the girl in the back of their truck.

Then, the Fryer brothers lined up Stewart Baade (15) with his little brother, Dana Baade (14) and friend, Michael Hadrath (15) and executed them. Cheskey was kept alive and raped by James Fryer. She later identified the attackers and testified against them. They were sentenced to life in prison but locals on both sides, Iowa and South Dakota, believe their heinous crimes still haunt the Gitchi Manitou.

Photo: Ray lowry/Wikimedia Commons

The Legends Of Sica Hollow

The Dakota Sioux Native Americans once hunted in the forested ravines known as Sica Hollow – that is, until they realized it was haunted and put a warning in its name. Sica means ‘evil’ and there are several legends that have come out of this State Park.

It’s believed evil is steeped into every nook and cranny of this area, which is why the water runs red in the Sica Hollow springs – nevermind the mineral content, it’s pure evil. The path referred to as  ‘The Trail of Spirits’ has bubbling red bogs and was believed by the Sioux to be the flesh and blood of their ancestors. Between all the red water, swamp gas, and tree stumps glowing in the dark, it’s no wonder they thought the place was evil. Perhaps they were right.

There was a rash of mysterious disappearances in the 1970s, paired with sightings of a half-man-half-beast similar to Bigfoot in those woods. Even today, visitors have claimed to see the spirits of Indians in addition to hearing voices, war cries, and chanting. Maybe those bogs really did consume the flesh and blood of the Sioux tribe’s ancestors.

Photo: SmileDarling/flickr/CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

Walking Sam

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has had an alarmingly high suicide rate amongst their youth and it’s believed an urban legend is responsible. The land is being stalked by an evil, ancient entity that takes on the form of “Walking Sam.” Like the “Tall Man,” “Slenderman,” and the long feared “Stick men,” this creature feeds on the living, infecting their minds and altering their thoughts.

In the case of Walking Sam, his evil bidding is collecting the souls of suicides so he doesn’t have to wander the earth alone. He convinces the already lost, depressed, or hormonal adolescents that they aren’t worthy of life and that they should end it. He stands around seven feet tall, has no mouth, and has gangly limbs. When his arms are outstretched, you can see the bodies of Lakota men and women hanging from them.

Since December of 2014, Pine Ridge has had 103 suicide attempts with nine people succeeding. The youngest was only 12 and the oldest was just 24. There have even been attempts at mass suicides on the grounds. Thankfully, church leader Pastor John Two Bulls discovered and prevented one of these plans from being carried out. He and a few other adults found a group of teenagers with nooses already hanging from the trees.

Another group of teens, all female, tried to carry out a similar plan but were stopped in time. Why are they doing it? Tribe leaders, clergymen, local mental health professionals, and law enforcement are scratching their heads. What, if not some great evil, is infecting the minds of so many young people in Pine Ridge? Is it poverty? Is it abuse? Or is it the creature kids call Walking Sam?

Photo: Fujoshi/flickr/CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

Hooky Jack

A famous ghost in Rapid City, South Dakota, is Hooky Jack. In life, his name was John Leary, but after a mining explosion in the 1800s, he lost both of his arms and one eye. His arms were replaced with hooks, hence the nickname Hooky Jack. He became a Rapid City police officer, but tragically died after being struck by a car in 1926. Now, his spirit is said to haunt his former residence, which has since been converted into a tavern.

According to legend, Hooky Jack lived on the third floor and can still be heard roaming up there today. Employees don’t even want to venture to that floor unless they absolutely must – many employees have even refused to work the closing shift alone. Voices, rattling, and eerie sounds can be heard upstairs at night.

Strange flashing lights and spirit orbs have been caught on the proprietor’s security footage. Multiple witnesses have seen chairs, tables, and the billiard balls moving around the table on their own. A few bartenders claim to have seen a figure sit at the end of the bar out of the corner of their eye, only to look up and realize there’s no one there.

Photo: ScottNorrisPhoto/flickr/CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Bullock Hotel

The historic Bullock Hotel in Deadwood, South Dakota, was built between 1894 and 1896. It’s a pretty famous haunt and has been featured on shows like Unsolved Mysteries and the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures.

The original owner, Seth Bullock, who was also the first sheriff of Deadwood, haunts the hotel. A slew of people have heard his boots thumping steadily down the halls and smelled the scent of his favorite cigars wafting through the air. The cellar, where Seth’s Cellar Restaurant is located, is said to see the most paranormal activity. Restaurant staff have heard the eerie sound of a piano playing ragtime and glassware is often shattered after being flung through the air by an invisible force.

Bullock Hotel – Everything South Dakota Photo

Spook Road

Known to locals as Spook Road, this eerie stretch just outside of Brandon, South Dakota, has quite the collection of creepy occurrences under its belt. Winding through tunnels, running over bridges, and lined in trees, locals claim this road is especially unnerving in the fall and winter months.

One urban legend state’s that driving in one direction will take you over five bridges, but on the way back, you’ll only cross four. Allegedly, suicide victims can still be seen hanging from both the bridges and the trees, their bulging dead eyes watching you as you cross in horror. Some folks say apparitions have suddenly appeared on the road in front of them, only to vanish just as quickly as they came.

Photo: Unsplash/Pixabay/CC0 1.0

The Orpheum Theatre

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sits the historic Orpheum Theater with its very own ghost. The spirit, fondly referred to a “Larry,” may or may not be the ghost of an actor who disappeared during a dress rehearsal many years ago. Allegedly, the sound of a gunshot rang out from the light booth, but when his fellow actors ran up to investigate, all that remained was a pool of blood and no body was ever found.

The Orpheum Theatre first opened in 1913, but changed hands in 1954. The new owners allegedly found a casket in the boiler room, but when they came back later to clean things out, the casket was gone. Reports of strange noises and sightings of a shadow figure became common in the old theater and one of the more intriguing reports happened in 1959.

Actor Ray Loftesness became one of many to see this shadow man on the balcony. On that particular night, he said Larry was illuminated by the green and blue lights and was pointing directly at him. Loftesness claimed he was hit by a icy blast of air. Twice that night, he was assaulted by falling sandbags and was even knocked unconscious. Larry clearly had it out for the guy.

Photo: Jasperdo/flickr/CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Legend Of The “Little Devils” Of Spirit Mound

The Spirit Mound near Vermillion has been long feared by Native Americans. They wouldn’t dare go near it because of the legend of the “little devils” who guard the mounds, attacking anyone who tries to climb them with magic arrows. The legend was first documented 1804 and tells of the massacre that makes the mounds taboo today.

Somewhere around the mid 18th century, hundreds of Indian warriors allegedly attempted to rid the world of the evil little creatures, but it was they who ended up slaughtered instead. So now, they stay away and leave the mounds to the little devils.

Photo: travfotos/flickr/CC-BY-NC 2.0

Easton Castle

The Easton Castle, also known as the yellow brick house, was built sometime between 1889 and 1890 in Aberdeen, South Dakota. This 30-room, three-story, Queen Anne-style mansion was covered in yellow bricks in 1902 when Carroll Francis Easton took ownership. The housekeeper of this massive home just so happened to be Leslie Gage, the niece of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz.

Gage was the inspiration behind Dorothy. Rumor has it, this muse of a housekeeper haunts the third floor and has been seen all throughout the home. According to the whispers of busybodies of the time, the Easton’s son became a little mad and reclusive after the death of his parents, hiding away in the old house that was now believed to be haunted. He didn’t maintain the property and its unkempt appearance only added to the lore of ghosts and curses swirling around the property.

The mansion has your standard haunting tales like footsteps, creaking stairs, and disembodied voices, but apparently there’s also a knife-wielding psycho spirit that chased one person out of there.

Photo: Joel Bradshaw/Wikimedia Commons

The Legend Of Jesse James At Devil’s Gulch

One of the most famous urban legends in South Dakota happened in the town of Garretson. According to local lore, infamous outlaw Jesse James successfully evaded capture in 1876 by leaping over the Devil’s Gulch on horseback. Keep in mind that the Devil’s Gulch is a ravine that runs 60-feet deep and is 20-feet wide. Jumping over something that massive without spooking a horse is highly improbable, and most historians would say it’s impossible, but that doesn’t stop locals from swearing it happened.

Photo: MissyAdventures/flickr/CC-BY-NC 2.0

10 Ghost Stories And Scary Tales That Prove South Dakota Is The Creepiest State Thank you to Lyra Radford for letting me re-post her article. Visit Lyra's website at www.unsettlingthings.com…